One New Orleans Family Comes Home to Princeton

Candace Braun

The black cloud that hit the Gulf Coast last month had a silver lining for former Princetonian Rick Davis, and he and his family found it in Princeton.

"People have been extremely generous," Mr. Davis said, noting that his family has received offers of clothing, food, and housing since their arrival here almost three weeks ago following Hurricane Katrina.

Although the Davis family has lived in New Orleans for the past nine years, they have ties to the Princeton community. Mr. Davis attended Princeton High School in his youth, and both he and his wife, Ina, were employees of Town Topics at different points in their lives. Mr. Davis delivered newspapers when he was 16, and Mrs. Davis worked in the newspaper's advertising department.

Since arriving in Princeton this month, Mr. Davis has been running his New Orleans-based marketing business from a friend's home on Wheatsheaf Lane.

"We all escaped before the hurricane hit," he said, considering himself and his family blessed for having been spared the worst of it.

Living near Lake Pontchartrain, the Davis family was just north of the flooding, and luckily, as Mr. Davis found out this weekend, their house had avoided the brunt of the storm.

"Everybody has their own story … we were lucky to have so many friends and family to help us," he said, noting that some of their friends had to swim through the waters to find help, while others were pulled off rooftops by helicopters.

"Pretty much everyone we know was affected by this," he said, adding that many of the employees in his own company, Ace Bayou, have had their homes entirely flooded or blown apart by hurricane winds.

"They will never get that back," he said.

The night before the hurricane hit, Mr. Davis was out of town on business, but advised his family to drive out of the area of potential danger. His wife and three sons loaded up the car with their dogs and got as far as Birmingham, Alabama, before the storm forced them to stop. After it passed they took a flight to Princeton, where they stayed with Mr. Davis's cousin, Laura Boyd, at her home on Cherry Hill Road.

An employee at The Cafe in the Princeton Shopping Center, Ms. Boyd is spearheading a fundraising effort to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. During the month of October The Cafe will hold Sunday brunches where all the proceeds will be donated to hurricane victims, she said.

This past week the Davis family has been staying with friends Betty and Corky Smith, and the family's three sons have all enrolled in schools in the area. Matt, 19, is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania; David, 16, is a junior at the Lawrenceville School; and Brett, 10, is in fifth grade at Littlebrook Elementary School.

Depending on how long it takes New Orleans to get everything back up and running again, the Davis family may keep their children in the area schools until the end of the school year, said Mr. Davis. Many New Orleans teachers have been advised to seek other work, and some have taken jobs in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi, which could delay the schools' reopening.

A First Look

Mr. Davis journeyed down to New Orleans this past weekend for the first time since the hurricane hit, and was relieved to find that, although the electricity was out and his car was trapped under a fallen tree, his house was still standing.

"It was really sort of a miracle. We were very fortunate," he said on Monday. However, he added: "There's plenty of reasons to not rush back there."

After taking a plane to New Orleans as one of very few civilians on a flight mostly made up of those going to the Gulf Coast to provide rescue relief, Mr. Davis was greeted by armed soldiers and the National Guard, who questioned his presence in the disaster-stricken community.

He described the sights he saw, which included flooded homes and downed trees in a city with no electricity where temperatures were reaching upwards of 100 degrees, as "mind boggling."

"It's going to take awhile for New Orleans to come back. The amount of debris is indescribable."

And, despite the much criticized lack of security in the city after the flooding first occurred, now the security is so severe that Mr. Davis was barely able to enter his own home.

"I didn't go one house past my own," he said, adding that the only reason he believes he was able to pass the check points was because he had an engineer with him who was down there to help gas companies get their oil systems back online.

"New Orleans is going to have some areas closed for a long time," said Mr. Davis, noting that he was fortunate enough to be able to take the highway to his part of the city, which was closed until this past Saturday. In order to get to his home, he had to take a small road and a bridge that had been built after the flooding.

"We'll be here for awhile," said Mr. Davis, using the word "indefinite" to describe the time it will take to get things back to normal.

He added, however, that while Hurricane Katrina may have devastated a community, it has helped build a sense of camaraderie among people both in New Orleans, and across the country.

"The outpouring of support and love — the people who are coming to the aid of others — is just incredible."