MADELEINE BRAND, host:
From NPR News, it's DAY TO DAY. When the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims were first recovered last year, most of them were sent to a morgue set up in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
NPR's Mike Pesca reported from the town a year ago. It was a time when many people worried St. Gabriel might become marked by a sense of death. One year later, Mike has returned to St. Gabriel.
MIKE PESCA reporting:
If you parachuted into St. Gabriel, you might take one look at the dirt roads, farmland and two filling stations that seem to comprise the retail district and say to yourself that you must be at least 75 miles from a city of any size. In fact, you're only eight miles from the town line of Baton Rouge, Louisiana's state capital and now its largest city.
History has been for the promises to emanate from Baton Rouge and for the check to come due in St. Gabriel. Over the years the state has stuck two adult prisons here, a juvenile detention facility, and even a leper colony.
And almost a year ago the message went out: the bodies from Katrina were coming here too. At a town hall meeting, nerves were frayed.
Unidentified Woman: I don't know exactly why they choose this town, I really don't.
PESCA: But the mayor, George Grace, held firm. This is our calling and our duty, he argued, and eventually his argument won the day. Today Mayor Grace sits in an office in Town Hall inside the facility where FEMA and the disaster mortuary operational response team set up shop. Two steps from his office door, he points to a huge warehouse that they used until December and remembers the mood of the town.
Mayor GEORGE GRACE: (St. Gabriel, Louisiana): All kind of rumors started they were going to be burning bodies back here and all that kind of thing like that.
PESCA: Yes.
Mayor GRACE: So I wanted to make sure that our people had the correct interpretation of what was about to happen here.
PESCA: Louisiana state medical examiner Louis Kataldi(ph) ran the morgue in St. Gabriel.
Mr. LOUIS KATALDI (Medical Examiner): Initially there was a great deal of concern about contamination of the human remains of the bodies. And that was certainly a legitimate concern you wanted to know - hey you're bringing contaminated water over here? What does that mean? Is it a health hazard? Are there infections diseases? Of course that was not the case. There were no adverse effects from that.
PESCA: Kataldi says that St. Gabriel came to rally around him and the cause.
Mr. KATALDI: You know, even though the morgue's closed, when I got back there now, going down the (unintelligible) stop at the store, somebody's always coming up to me saying, hey, Doc, you know, remember when we worked together over there? And hey, we appreciate what happened here. And you know, the community stepped up to the plate and I think they're proud of that, as they should be.
PESCA: What the townspeople may have not realized was that in welcoming the morgue, they were welcoming a new era into town, says George Grace.
Mayor GRACE: This turned out to be such a positive thing for the town, in terms of the publicity and the feedback that people would get from their relatives and friends from all over the country.
PESCA: Soon, Mayor Grace says, he began to receive calls: developers who never realized how much open space there was in an area so near Baton Rouge and only 70 miles from New Orleans. The mayor goes over to an aerial photo tacked to his wall. It's plans for development which if complete will increase the town's population by 15 percent.
Mayor GRACE: A thousand fifty homes, restaurants in here, some retail outlets.
Mr. EUGENE LEBLANC(ph) (Local Resident): George has made it happen, there's no question.
PESCA: Local resident Eugene LeBlanc credits the mayor for his leadership over the past year, but now worries about what will happen to this town.
Mr. LEBLANC: It's great to have some more people coming in. But I live up in Plackman Point(ph), in a rural area, and I'm happy with it like that. But I know it's got to change, and so you have to accept change, I guess. So like everywhere else, it's just a mix blessing, you know?
PESCA: Mixed blessings and silver linings have become the local specialty in St. Gabriel. Mike Pesca, NPR News.
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