MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block in Washington D.C.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And from New Orleans, I'm Michele Norris. Before Katrina smacked this city there were half a million residents who lived here. So there are half a million Katrina stories to be told. We've been focusing for months now on one of them. We first met hurricane evacuee Sharon White at a shelter in Baton Rouge.
SHARON WHITE: And I am not a refugee. I wasn't shipped here. I don't care if we were brought from that River Center or that Superdome or wherever we've been shipped. We are not refugees. You hold your head up. We are United States citizens and you be proud of that.
A lot of us are tax paying, honest, hard working people. I'm like, when, did I come from another country? That's what they used to call people that was in the boats and that was sneaking over here. I am a survivor. They need to say the survivors of Katrina.
NORRIS: Since then we've had several conversations. We've heard her grief over losing her mother after the storm, and watching a series of family members move away. And though she was at first committed to rebuild, when we last spoke, she wasn't so sure. The city has determined that her neighborhood may not be habitable. It's in a low-lying area that's prone to flooding.
It was good to see Sharon in person again. We visited her temporary digs in Gretna, just across the river.
WHITE: This is one that was sent to me from the lady with the...
NORRIS: She's living with a friend, sleeping in the den. She's tried to make it feel like home surrounding herself with family pictures and curio cabinets filled with her cherished collection of angels.
WHITE: She prays.
ANGEL DOLL: Thank you for your love and prayer. Thank you for all things everywhere.
WHITE: My collection is better now, actually. This is the last one I received about a month ago from a listener and...
NORRIS: One of our listeners, NPR listener.
WHITE: Yeah. NPR. And her name is Betty and it's just beautiful. I actually sent her a photo of me holding it. And I call her Betty.
NORRIS: It's a brown-skinned angel with long hair.
WHITE: And this is one of my Katrina ones. They used to play music but I saved, I went back to the house and actually saved a lot of my Katrina ones, as you can see, worked it out.
NORRIS: You can see that there's water damage there.
WHITE: Yeah. Now him, he still has Katrina water in him.
NORRIS: Oh, you can hear him.
WHITE: Uh huh. The water is still inside. I can't get it out.
NORRIS: Emotionally Sharon White has rounded a corner. She says her pity party is over. Once again, she's determined to rebuild her damaged home. She's an organized warrior. She's got a building permit, now she wants a FEMA trailer so she can go back and begin the restoration. Her battle station is a small computer desk. It's where she keeps her files and photos of her home.
WHITE: It's empty, it's just not gutted. The walls are not out, so I'm not going to go and sleep amongst the mold now. Once I gut it, you know, yeah I might sleep, I'll buy a little bed or something, like, take my little futon I had in Baton Rouge or something. I just want to go home.
NORRIS: When I look at this picture and I see this water line that's just a few inches from the ceiling I wonder if you have considered, now, the possibility that maybe this house is no longer fit for humans to live in.
WHITE: Right now it's not, no. But when I look at it I see potential because, you know what, I had, I wanted to do a lot of work on it, but now I've got to do a lot. I mean, see when you see it, it looks bad. It looks horrible. I'll be the first person, but when I look at it I'm looking, I look at the torn walls out already. You see, I'm a visionary, I guess, and I see brand new sheetrock and a brand new ceiling fan, and I see a better room. I've been looking at furniture. I see potential, you know.
I didn't work two jobs and struggle the way I struggled to sit and just watch my property, you know, I go home, I don't cry anymore, but I go home and it still breaks my heart to see it like that. It's laid open. It's wide open. It's just, it's no life, and I want that life back. I want that life back into that neighborhood, not just my house but into the neighborhood.
I used to run the little kids off my yard when I first would cut it and they were tearing up my little shrubbery I was trying, but I would love to see those kids run through that yard again, you know. Because I stayed on the corner so they always cut through my property making a line and I was trying to keep my little grass so trimmed up. But that's all right. It's going to be, it's going to come back.
NORRIS: Has the stress started to take a toll on you physically?
WHITE: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. The stress and, I mean, you know, from all areas, the house situation.
NORRIS: How so?
WHITE: Well, I'm not the healthiest person in the world, I know that. And I know, I had a surgery that I was putting off last year, before Katrina. I had been fighting it and I know it needs to happen, you know, and I'm not going to, I ain't ready for that though, because it puts me on my back for two and a half months. So I'd sit on my back, I'm not the kind of person that can sit on my back for two and a half months. If I do that...
NORRIS: Your health is...
WHITE: I know, but if I take this surgery, if I do this surgery, two and a half months, nobody can pay my bills. I'm going to lose the house. I know that sounds crazy because you're talking about a materialistic thing over your health, but it's not that.
NORRIS: It sounds like your health or your house.
WHITE: I'm in a catch 22. I'm in a catch 22.
NORRIS: After all these months of talking about Sharon White's home, I'd never seen it for myself. So we drove to New Orleans East. She tenses up as we turn into her neighborhood of one-story homes. They're mainly brick and you see evidence that they were well cared for before the storm. Many have statues of the Madonna in the front yard. Almost all are still standing, but look closer and you see the high water marks just under the roofline.
WHITE: Get the grass coming back like the people. Look at my sign, it's still there.
NORRIS: When we finally reach our destination it's a grim picture. The doors are wide open. Inside a mosaic of cracked mud covers the floor and the walls. A white sign flaps on her backyard fence. She forked out $75 for that sign. It's about the size of a bedroom window and it carries her email address, an appeal to neighbors to unite for what's right, and this declaration.
WHITE: Ain't politician high enough, ain't no commission low enough to keep me away. It came from the song. I kind of borrowed if from Motown, you know,
NORRIS: Ain't No Mountain High Enough?
WHITE: Ain't No Mountain High Enough. But the main thing is getting together. They want us to get together. When you don't know when people coming back, you have to do something.
NORRIS: She adjusts the ties on the sign and then turns to survey the rest of her neighborhood.
WHITE: Oh, boy. This is my property. Aw, man. A trailer. Another soul. Yes, come on baby, come on. We're coming back. We're coming back. Aw, man. That's good. That's still good. It may not have lights, but there's a trailer, two houses, oh, God, that's like four houses from me. How did you got this trailer girl? You go girl.
NORRIS: Sharon White is bouncing around the street like a kid at Christmas. The trailer, she says, is a sign that maybe the city has not written off her street.
WHITE: That's a positive. I feel good. I'm sorry. I know that sounds so silly. Ya'll are like, that's just a trailer. But to me, that's an opportunity that my neighborhood is coming back. It's going to, it's like, it's going to happen. I'm excited.
NORRIS: One house on Bonita Drive, one woman's plight, but a story that speaks for so many displaced New Orleanians. Sharon White worked and saved her way out of the housing projects. When she purchased that home on Bonita, she became the first home owner in her family. These days she says it feels like she's losing her grip on a middle class life. Paying a mortgage on a home she can't live in, watching her savings slip down to nothing, trying to make sure her dreams don't slip away, too.
WHITE: Some people may look at this and say oh, my God, you can't come back from that. But they don't know me. They don't know me.
NORRIS: Photos of Sharon White's sign and her house are at our website npr.org.
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