Bush sees rebirth from ‘sadness’ of Katrina

After the speech, Bush’s motorcade headed through poor areas of the city and stopped at the home of music legend Fats Domino, which was seriously damaged by the storm. “How about it, Fats Domino,” Bush said as they emerged from the house. Bush said he would replace a National Medal of Arts that Domino lost in the storm.

Bells, meanwhile, rang across the city at 9:38 as survivors of the storm gathered outside City Hall.

“I felt like I needed to be here. It’s like a funeral, and life goes on after today,” said Gayla Dunn, 33, of New Orleans.

From City Hall, Mayor Ray Nagin told the crowd the anniversary was a difficult day for everyone, including himself. “Trust me. We will get through it. We will get through it together,” he said.

The working relationship between Bush and Nagin, a Democrat, has been tense ever since the first days after Katrina made landfall last year. Nagin has blamed the federal government for reacting too slowly to rescue stranded New Orleanians and for tying up relief money in red tape, while surrogates for the president have accused state and local officials of mishandling the money.

After they met for breakfast Tuesday to mark the anniversary, Bush echoed some of Nagin’s observations in his interview with NBC News.

“I think what [people] are worried about is that at the federal level they just write a check and just move on,” he said. “And there are a lot of things we need to do. We need to cut through some bureaucracy.”

Local parish officials “are concerned about nitpicking rules. There clearly needs to be some more entrepreneurship here at the local level,” he added.

“On the other hand, I can see why FEMA officials are worried, because they’ve been castigated. And so people are risk-averse. [We] need to encourage them to be more flexible, and we’ll cover them if Congress gets on them, which inevitably they will,” Bush said.

'It has been a long year'
Elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, residents commemorated the storm that brought the region to its breaking point.

In the hard-hit town of Bay St. Louis, Miss., parishioners of the destroyed Christ Episcopal Church gathered around the restored bell tower and rang the bell 58 times — one for each local victim of the storm — punctuated by three peals representing the Holy Trinity.

Dootsie Murphy of Bay St. Louis was just glad her church could come together for the occasion. "It has been a long year," she said.

In Gulfport, Miss., Mayor Brent Warr exhorted residents to stick with recovery efforts.

“We’re not well. We’re not finished," he said. "But I will say this: We’ve made it. Let’s move on. Let’s move forward.”

In a park overlooking the Mississippi Sound in Gulfport, Ware and his community remembered 14 residents lost to the storm. Firefighters, police officers and paramedics carried 14 red roses to the front of the stage, placing them in a ceremonial vase.

The daughter of an 83-year-old man who drowned in his home last year clutched one of the roses after the service. “I’m hoping this is a step forward. I’ve been crying for a year and I’m tired of crying,” said Carolyn Bozzetti, 60.

In St. Bernard Parish, where virtually every building was flooded when levees buckled, about 400 people assembled for mass at Our Lady of Prompt Succor, a church named for the saint to whom Catholics in Louisiana traditionally pray for protection from hurricanes.

Much still to be done
Throughout the city, white trailers still line driveways in neighborhoods where debris is stacked up in piles and unchecked weeds have overtaken abandoned houses. Only half the population has returned. Emergency medical care is doled out in an abandoned department store, while six of New Orleans’ nine hospitals remain closed. Only 54 of 128 public schools are expected to open this fall.

The one-year mark is a reminder of how much needs to be done. And Bush and his wife told NBC News they were personally committed to getting it done because of their own close ties to New Orleans.

“George and I grew up in a neighboring state,” Laura Bush told Williams. “This was the vacation destination that I went to with my parents when I was younger. I rode the Wild Mouse at the big park at Lake Pontchartrain with my mother, and we both screamed years ago, and it was also a place that we brought our children.”

She noted that it was in New Orleans that the Republican Party nominated Bush’s father for president in 1988. “We had a wonderful summertime there in 1988,” she said. “We have many personal family memories of New Orleans, and it’s a special city to us.”

President Bush said his visit Monday and Tuesday “reminded me of how connected we are to New Orleans. We’ve got a lot of friends, and we’ve got a lot of memories.”

“I can remember going to the jazz festival here early on,” he said. “It’s a remarkable city, particularly if you’re somebody out of Houston or Texas — you will probably spend a lot of time here, most of which you can remember.”

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