We finally moved back into our House of Studies in New Orleans on January 5th, after four months of living in exile, one at Marylake and the other three at our Nuns in Covington. The first week was tough. We had electricity, but no gas. That meant cold showers, which didn’t seem to bother Brother Joseph Le. Our Fr. Provincial, however, drove over to his parents home in Harrah to take a shower. Recall that we had to ditch both refrigerator and freezer in our first visit to the house after the hurricane hit. Brother Joseph Le’s status as a Katrina refugee is questionable since he moved out just before Katrina to make a six month "second novitiate" in our monastery in Oklahoma City in preparation for his solemn profession which took place in San Antonio on the Feast of the Holy Family. Here are a couple of on-the-scene reports.

Greetings from New Orleans. Joseph Le and I moved back into our house here last Thursday [the 5th], and I've been pre-occupied with trying to get things up and running. We will not have the natural gas turned back on until Wednesday, so we are still without heat, hot water, a stove and a clothes dryer. Over the weekend, I resumed the work of switching room and office, combined with sorting through four months of accumulated papers/mail, etc. What a mess! On the cold days, I confined myself to one room, which I warmed with a portable heater. The rest of the house was really cold!

–Fr. Gregory 09-Jan-06

Things here are slowly getting back to normal. Our new refrigerator and freezer are being delivered today [Monday], so we will now have "all the conveniences of modern life" once again!

–Fr. Gregory 23-Jan-06

We have frig and deepfreezer now, along with all the utilities, phones and internet. Big seminary [photo] next door to us does not have phones. The city is coming back in some parts; in others it is like post war zones. What disaster. At the day of recollection last Saturday at a New Orleans parish, I had to give time to people to emote in public before getting to the subject of bring the Beatitudes to this post-Katrina/Rita period. They responsed well. Even men shed tears when speaking. They have really been through a lot of loss, big time loss. I feel we Carmelites are among the fortunate ones. I also felt I had little to bring in terms of experience to people who suffered so much.

–Fr. Sam 26-Jan-06

Last Friday, Sr Joan and I went in with a friend to New Orleans. I had been to Metairie after Katrina, and except for debris and sheetrock piled up everywhere, it looked fairly normal, except for trailers parked in front yards while residents redid their homes. But New Orleans parish was quite a different story, we went to the Rampart Street Monastery [photo], and also our little Monastery home on Mirabeau Ave.

The French Quarter didn’t flood so the damage on Rampart Street was wind damage. But there was a lot, one of the thick exterior enclosure walls took a big hit when an oak fell on it, and the beautiful chapel was damaged the most. Father Capucci from Boston was getting ready to return to his diocese. Once Katrina came his bishop allowed him to stay another year as he is so needed there to run the Center of the Lord Jesus. He’s a wonderful priest. He said the doors to the chapel blew open and then the wind rushed in and blew out numerous stained glass windows: four of the big ones, and two in the back of the chapel higher [photo], and even the one of the transfiguration in the sanctuary high up in the wall. The rose window at the back suffered extensive damage too. Most of the cherubs, and our Lady were blown out in the Rose Window. It looked so strange to see it in that condition: headless cherubs and Our Lady gone. Father Capucci said it would cost about $25,000 per window to repair, and they don't have that money, as so many other repairs are needed. They aren't doing retreats or conferences yet but some money is coming in as a big hotel is renting rooms there for their workers and repair crews. Father Capucci is such a gracious host. We had dinner with him in his kitchen (our former sacristy). He has a picture on the wall of one of our Carmelite Nuns preparing for Mass when it was still the sacristy. He wants to do that in every office, showing a picture of what it was originally used for; we had given him a lot of negatives from our archives.

From Rampart we went to the Mirabeau Monastery. It was like entering another world: desolation, destruction everywhere, hardly a car in the streets. Block after block of ruined homes with the water mark clearly showing. And the water mark is where the water stood for three weeks, it actually rose higher. The mayor and the governor are saying ‘come back, come back’ to the people, now that the government is going to give $3.1 billion to improve the levees but what will they come back to? Not everyone can afford to rebuild, and what if you are the only one on the block to rebuild, and all around you is desolation. What kind of life would you be able to reconstruct? And what about your safety? At Mirabeau we got out and were even able to walk inside the little monastery. I am so glad Mother Mary did not live to see it; she would have been devastated. I thought it was the perfect little monastery. I loved everything about it. The only problem with it was it was too small to receive novices and not much grounds for our way of life. What if we had stayed? Where would we be now?

Here are pictures of the Mirabeau monastery. The water level line was just below the middle of the windows, then the familiar marks on the door which mean the place has been inspected, then the plank on the front porch saying, "Gutt It."

Lest we wondered what "Gutt it" meant, we then walked inside. Here’s what we found. The whole neighborhood, for blocks and blocks, is uninhabited and looks like this. Sad, sad." [Sr. Joan, photographer]

The first floor was an absolute mess; water still standing in some places, everything gutted; the front yard and back yard a sea of mud, and all around it the same stillness and desolation and destruction. The oak tree was still there but nothing else. I feel so sorry for the Teresians; they bought the convent from us in 1995 and had renovated it so nicely for their retired sisters.
We passed by St Joseph Convent. I hardly recognized it; it looked like a group of old, blighted buildings. Sr. Suellen, our Vicar for Religious, told us they are not coming back, the Holy Family sisters too are not coming back. What a tragedy!

The minute we passed from Orleans Parish into Metairie (over the 17th street canal) where it had not flooded, what a difference! Still debris around but so much more life, cars in the streets, stores open, homes occupied or being renovated. Please keep in your prayers all these people and that some day New Orleans will return to normal, hopefully in my lifetime.

Sr. Aletheia

Sister Aletheia traveled into New Orleans to check on our nuns old convent in the French Quarter as well as their temporary quarters on Mirabeau. The winds damaged the old convent on Rampart; floods took the area around Mirabeau. More later.

Our two students, Juan and Joseph Marie, are finishing up their fall semester in Covington and plan to move back into the house of studies before Christmas. Student Master, Fr. Sam, plans to move back into the New Orleans house tomorrow. We have electricity and drinkable water. I'm not sure about internet access, which has been spotty even in Covington across the lake. We were fortunate to have received little water damage to the house. The water flooded the parking lot outside, and we lost the two cars left there in the evacuation, but only one room of our house suffered bad water damage due to a window breaking during the storm. The water came up to the top step of our porch and spared the first floor.

Our sister in Carmel, Marion Stearns OCDS, was finally laid to rest on December 3. What a terrible ordeal this has been for her family. Marion drowned in her home in Chalmette on August 29, and her body was finally delivered to her family on the last of November. Seven members of her Carmelite community said the rosary and litany of Loretto at her wake and sang the Salve Regina at her funeral. God bless her husband and children for having to endure such a drawn out ordeal to bury their loved one.

One more Carmelite from New Orleans is found safe: Shelly Thomas. So that’s 20 missing, 9 safe, and 1 dead in New Orleans as of today. Provincial Councillor Gerald Alford, recovering from a triple bypass operation, took refuge from hurricane Rita in Pensacola, Florida. "A bad night, in a bad inn." That is how Saint Teresa of Jesus is said to have defined this earthly life. On his way home to Lafayette, he and his wife Betty dropped by to visit our nuns in Covington who are doing fine. The reports of "starving Carmelite nuns" had been an erroneous rumor.

"Our younger son who stayed behind telephoned us about 1am on the 24th that a tree had been blown down and landed on the back corner of our house in Lafayette. Water had poured in and damaged a chair my wife bought, which I hated... Even she came to lose affection for it because it was really not comfortable to sit in. It was stressful - now knowing exactly what was going on back home. But our son did well in covering the best he could the floor and furnishings inside, and Betty has these wonderful relatives from New Orleans, some of whom we had provided shelter from Katrina, and three of the guys came to Lafayette and covered the damaged area with tarps. Their generous act was a great consolation to me and relieved my already physically aching heart." [Gerald Alford]

The report from the President of our New Orleans community: "I have finally had a chance to think about our chapter and our start up. My employer, Folger Coffee Company was about the only thing running in New Orleans last week. The city was a lifeless stinking mess. My drive to work each day is emotional. I heard stories today from people in St. Bernard Parish who lost everything and are living in someone’s garage somewhere on the North Shore or their family is two states away. My house [in Slidell] flooded as well but I have three bedrooms upstairs we are staying in and getting the flood out of the bottom floor. St. Bernard Parish is uninhabitable. Getting around in a car is difficult with checkpoints and roads restricted.

"I think our members are scattered around the southern U.S. I cannot foresee when things will be normal enough to have a meeting. What I want to recommend to our council is that our members join up with a chapter near where they are staying, continue their daily routine of prayer and reading (or get back into it), and wait. When the time is right we will start up again. It could be six months or two years. Can you do me a favor and serve as a liason to them in some fashion and let them know my recommendation. Somehow we can make a joint communication to all members who we have contact with." Your brother, Bruce

So far, I have only been in contact, directly or indirectly, with nine members of our New Orleans community. That leaves 21 either missing or as Bruce puts it "scattered around the south."

News from our nuns in Covington from Sister Alethea, [picture below]: “We had no internet access till Saturday a week ago. When I told Sr Edith about your blog, she told Ada Jordan [OCDS of New Orleans]... Thanks so much. I was happy to learn that at least some members of Marion Stearn's family survived; we had heard they all drowned.

“Now here is some news for you. Fr. Gregory Ross, Fr Sam Anthony and Brothers Joseph Marie and Juan, were allowed for the first time to return to the Student House in New Orleans yesterday, Sept 27, to see how it fared. Fr Sam Anthony was dreading it, especially from what we had heard of others who had returned to their homes, especially the condition of refrigerators and freezers. So, when they arrived at the Student House and Father Gregory said, "Let me be first", Fr. Sam Anthony was only too glad to say "Be my guest". However, it did not turn out to be as bad as they feared, with the exception of the freezer and refrigerator. The water line was to the second step and they have three steps so no water entered the house. They detected new mould only in the tv room where a window had blown out. All books, computers etc. safe. The brothers were heroic; they took the refrigerator and freezer out before emptying them; had to take an inner door off the hinges to get it out. They were wearing a big plastic bag with holes cut in it for arms and legs, long rubber gloves and masks. They double-bagged the contents; even so the smell, i.e. "stench" came through so they triple bagged the last one. The dumpster was near the bishop's house so they took it all there. They came back here late, tired and wanting a hot bath and bed. Their spirits were much revived this morning.

“You probably know that Fr Sam Anthony and the students who will be attending St Joseph Seminary this semester are living with us. The two students have our new First Professed Wing, a stand alone wing with bedroom and study for each and a kitchen and a foyer where they say the Hours together presided over by the Blessed Virgin Mary statue. Fr. Sam has our guest house; we are more than happy to do this for them.
Sorry so long, best wishes.” [Sr Aletheia, OCD]