Examining Hurricane Katrina from every angle

Money was tight in the Walker household, but the children never complained. They thanked God for every meal. At age eight, Walker started working for Aquarius Janitorial Service, mopping up dirty floors from the Shell Building on Poydras Street to Jimmy’s Bar on Willow Street. “I was always looking for a dollar,” he recalls of his youth. “I just wanted to sustain some kind of income.” When he turned thirteen, however, a near death experience changed his life. One evening in October 1979, Walker was crunched in the back of his stepfather’s little burgundy Vega hatchback as it cruised down General de Gaulle Boulevard near Lake Pontchartrain. Suddenly, there was a collision. On impact, Walker flew out of the car, landing on the roadway, a tire running over his limp body. Because New Orleans’s ambulance drivers were on strike, it took over two hours for medics to arrive. Walker was drifting in and out of consciousness; all he remembers about the tragedy is his mother holding his head, wailing, “Lord, don’t take my child ... Lord, don’t take my child” over and over again. “They didn’t know whether I was dead or alive,” he recalled of the accident. “I felt my soul leave my body headed to some beautiful bright light.” Eventually an ambulance arrived and Walker was rushed to Jo Ellen Smith Hospital. His face was swollen like a giant strawberry and his teeth cracked. A medic poured peroxide over his head as if baptizing him on the run. His hair turned reddish. His sobbing mother, he remembered, kept chanting “Take me instead, Lord. Oh God, take me instead.” Desperately, he wanted to comfort her. Somehow, he found the strength to softly say, “It’s all right. I’m back.”⁵⁹

Through a demanding combination of hourly prayer, intense willpower, and physical therapy, Walker did come back, forever changed. A favorite with the young ladies and a charismatic leader of all, he had a bright New Orleans future, a wide-open canvas in which an ambitious African American with drive could perhaps help break the cycle of poverty. But he had these haunting dreams — visions, really, with Jesus Christ talking to him. It was unnerving. He felt that he had been tapped, that making money (lots of money), his old ambition, was somehow corrupt. Like many people who have had near-death experiences, he knew there was something better than being rich. He decided to become a pastor for the destitute. Hence, in 1998, he took over Noah’s Ark, hoping to give hope to AIDS patients, heroin addicts, and down-and-outers. His new pulpit was located in a small stucco building with a wooden cross on its tiny steeple. On the day he accepted leadership of the 145-member congregation, he made a sacred vow to himself: Never would he shove Jesus down people’s throats like some Elmer Gantry wannabe. He cringed at the very notion of Holy Rollerism, but by his caring, loving ways, by his direct actions, he aspired to show the lost the way out of earthly hell and into heavenly salvation. No matter who you were, no matter how broken down or unlucky you were, Walker, who called everybody “dude,” would offer you a hug.

Although keeping Noah’s Ark open was always a financial challenge, Reverend Willie lived a charmed existence. He was madly in love with his elegant wife, Veronica, who sang mournful renditions of “I Don’t Worry Tomorrow” and “Thank You Lord” in church. Together they were raising three children in a house near Kenner, not far from the airport. It was a relatively safe suburban environment in which to raise kids. Every day, however, no matter what the weather, Reverend Willie headed into the Magnolia housing project near his church to minister to the needy. Like a door-to-door canvasser, he would wander around and check up on the dudes, particularly those living a marginal existence. If the Morrises were having a marital spat, he tried to ease the tension. If “Big Boy” was selling OxyContin for two dollars a pop to teenagers, Walker turned beat cop, confiscating the bottles and flushing the contents down the toilet. Every time he saw a young man scratching, taking on a fidgety persona, he intervened, instructing him on how to get off crack cocaine. Sometimes in Central City, however, all he could do was cry. On bad days it was a torturous ghetto that sometimes seemed too hard for love. Like when his cousin Wanda Morgan was raped in a vacant lot across from Estelle J. Wilson Funeral Home; the attackers smashed her head with a brick, causing her to bleed to death. “It was horrible,” Walker recalled. “But I didn’t give up on the neighborhood.”⁶⁰ Whether you liked Reverend Willie or not, he was a fixture around South Saratoga Street, and even his detractors admitted that he “walked the walk.”

Reverend Willie hustled around Central City at dusk on Saturday, August 27, trying to broker rides out of New Orleans for those without cars. He knew before he started that there was no way of saving everyone. The city would have to send buses, but so far, City Hall hadn’t said anything about organizing convoys to help those still left in the city. He had heard that FEMA had prepositioned buses at Camp Beauregard in Alexandria, Louisiana, ready to evacuate stranded New Orleans after the storm; true, it was only a rumor, but the mirage of such a fleet made him feel better. Reverend Willie was frustrated and frantic as night fell, with no help in sight and so much left to be done; he said prayers over and over again as an incantation against evil. ⁶¹

By then, the 263 pets from the LSPCA on Japonica Street had already reached Houston and were warm, dry, and safe in their temporary home.

Excerpted from “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” by Douglas Brinkley. Copyright © 2006, Douglas Brinkley. All rights reserved. Published by HarperCollins Publishers. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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