Shortly after Hurricane Katrina ripped through, a group of Seattleites and Californians, organized in large part by Jesse Robbins, headed down to help out. I was part of that group. The experience was humbling and heartening, surreal and sublime. One woman told me
“I had white caps in my living room! I had swim over to keep my refrigerator from floating out the front door. Twice! I got it though. I tell you, when my walls starting to shake from the wind, though, that’s when I got scared.”
If you’re interested, I captured it in blog posts written for the organization (Impressions, Mississippi Summer Redux, Day Off?, Last Days).
In any case, we were working in Mississippi, but took a drive over to New Orleans on a day off, to see for ourselves what was happening in the Big Easy. We talked our way past the military guards cordoning off the Ninth Ward and drove slowly, slackjawed around that devastated neighborhood: cars on top of fences, mud-caked windows, crosses spray-painted on walls indicating, one number per quadrant, the number of people found living and dead, and the number of pets found living and dead.
Knowing how it impacted me, it’s not hard to see how it impacted June Cross, producer of the film “The Old Man & the Storm”:
Six months after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, producer June Cross came across 82-year-old Herbert Gettridge working alone on his home in the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood devastated when the levees broke in August 2005. Over the next two years, Cross would document the story of the extended Gettridge clan, an African-American family with deep roots in New Orleans, as they struggled to rebuild their homes and their lives.
As part of its Black History Month program, Solid Ground on 45th will be showing “The Old Man & the Storm” this Wednesday, Feb 25th from noon to 2 pm. A $5 suggested donation supports the agency’s Anti-Racism Initiative. To RSVP or for more information, contact Irene Woo at 206.694.6798 or [email protected].