When The Saints Go Marching In - Or, Who Dat Winning the Superbowl?

No pictures - I wasn't there. You probably saw the game, anyway.

I didn't have a digital camera four years ago when Katrina hit Louisiana with even greater devastation than Andrew, the hurricane that chopped off everything that was higher than six feet, destroyed the groves managed by my brother-in-law, and filled their home with showers of rain and glass shards from what used to be their windows.

But Katrina did more, and the stories I heard were heart-rending.

I was living in Keller, Texas, then, attending Northgate United Methodist Church, a small congregation in Irving that does so much more than you'd expect from a church its size. A food pantry and clothing closet was ramped up to help the Katrina evacuees that had traveled as far north as the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Folks came in as soon as the doors were open, and they kept streaming in.

Mary Morgan, a friend of mine, and I volunteered to assemble supply bags so that toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, soap - things you don't realize how much you appreciate till you don't have any - for quick distribution.

Others were dealing firsthand with folks who needed our help. They wanted jobs. They wanted their kids back in school. They looked shell-shocked, but they maintained their dignity. I don't know how they coped.

Then our church got a call to help a family move from Irving to Garland, where government-subsidized apartments had been found to house them. They were staying in a cousin's 2-bedroom apartment. They were a multi-generational family of 16.

By the time you get to N for Northgate, or U for United Methodist or M for Methodist, maybe you've been making lots of phone calls. Maybe they thought we had a church van.

We had one soccer-mom type van and one white Silverado truck (mine.) We made so many trips moving them and their newly-acquired household goods and clothing (all packed in garbage bags....) Once the first round of family members arrived, they found that there'd been a snafu with the government paperwork. One young member of this family, possibly college-age, started another round of calls on his cell phone, mostly waiting as he repeatedly was put on hold.

He was directing the moving operation for his family. What a weight on those young shoulders....

During one of the return trips to Irving, while he waited again on hold, and his cell battery was draining, he told me their story.

His grandmother didn't want to leave their house. The family obeyed its matriarch. They watched the water rise, drowning the dog that lived next door. They fled to their house's upper floors. They realized they had to go.

Packing some family treasures they couldn't bear to leave behind into a few suitcases, they made their way out somehow and escaped. When the young man told me that, I first wondered, "If I had to leave, what would be the family treasures I couldn't bear to leave? Pegasus, the rocking horse my father made. Man o'War's photo. My two best ukuleles, one belonging to my mom, the other made by the late John Ogao. Photos we've never put on computer or posted on Facebook. Things from Hawai`i we can't replace. My wedding photo album. Family Bibles. I don't know - I'd need a trunk, not a suitcase. I'd need my Silverado....

Then I thought, "They don't have suitcases - where were the suitcases? They just have plastic bags...."

This family couldn't get the car started - it was overrun by water. They walked.

They became some of the folks you may remember waiting on I-10 to be rescued. They were there for a few days. Finally, help came. This family, with its few rescued family treasures packed in suitcases, and nothing else.

And when they finally could leave their destroyed city, they were told, "You have to leave the suitcases behind."

And that's why the evacuees fled into Texas with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

But, they had each other.

They were gracious. The grandmother reminded the children to "Thank Miss Beth" for helping them get to their new homes - but the youngsters needed no reminding. The young man, who did manage to get through the government red tape, tried to offer me money, but I couldn't take it. I accepted their hugs, and asked that they'd pray for me, just as I would pray for them.

I never saw them again, but I think of them now and then and hope they did as well as the Keller post office worker who landed a job there after leaving New Orleans after Katrina.

I certainly was thinking of them Sunday night, and all the other folks who sought a helping hand from our church, just to get back on their feet and get their lives going again.

I thought of the kind people at the Louisiana visitors' centers who gave me respite, Community Coffee and a little fluff of auburn-colored cotton during my many trips from Texas to Florida as I rescued my cabin. I thought of the nice Louisiana Mason who gave me one of his state pins when we met up with a Masonic convention in Baltimore.

(I also thought about the Baltimore Colts. . . I liked 'em when they were the Baltimore Colts.)

Some folks said you wouldn't be given a Superbowl just because you survived Katrina. That the Colts' quarterback wouldn't go soft on the Saints just because his daddy played for them years ago.

But then, I thought of all the folks who came into our church, heading to the jobs listings before they got the supplies we gave them just to get them through till their lives restarted again. The Saints weren't looking for charity Sunday night - that would have lessened the victory.

But as they kept saying, they were playing for a cause. And I hope that all those Louisiana folks were screaming as loudly as I was when the Saints marched into their first Superbowl victory.