LOCAL
Kimberly Marsh, The Oklahoma Eagle
Louvenia Jessemy, one of the last of the Camp Gruber evacuees to leave, hugs an American Red Cross volunteer as she prepares to board a bus on Oct. 6, 2005. Photo by A. Cuervo, Tulsa World Archive
Shana Miller won’t forget the grave looks of Louisiana officials after they first witnessed the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
Then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin flew out to look at what would eventually become a Category 5 storm that caused $161 billion in damage.
“When they came back that Saturday morning, they just looked terrible,” Miller recalled. “They all looked pale and they were like, get out. If you don’t have to be here, get out.”
For the six years she was in New Orleans, Miller rode out every hurricane — but Katrina was different. Miller packed up her car and headed to Tulsa, where she was born and raised. What was supposed to be a pit stop became her home, again, for the past 20 years.
“I left and I didn’t worry about going back,” she said.
Miller’s story is reflective of the thousands of people who left and didn’t return home in the aftermath. For some who got stuck in New Orleans, it took much longer to get out after levees broke and the city flooded, stranding survivors on rooftops and in attics.
Many evacuees to Oklahoma found themselves arriving at Camp Gruber southeast of Tulsa on Sept. 5, traumatized by what they’d experienced. Despite the chaos and new surroundings, three Tulsa women emerged as their cultural guardians and personal advocates.
“I will always remember the vacant looks on their faces … the fear of where they were,” said Carmen Pettie, program coordinator with the Metropolitan Tulsa Urban League at the time.
“We just tried to be a smiling face, and people who would listen to their stories and help them,” Pettie said.
For some of the evacuees, getting to Tulsa was the hard part. They were transported out of New Orleans’ Superdome after chopping through roofs, slogging through fetid water and attempting to hail National Guard helicopters in desperate pleas for help. Others sat on rooftops while some were stuck on highways in sweltering heat.
Pettie said the exhaustion of the journey was apparent.
“Literally, they were still in the same clothes they were in the day the storm hit and they had to walk out into the water,” she said.
Jeanetta Williams, also with Tulsa’s Urban League, remembered something similar.
“It was very unsettling to see some of those people getting off the bus,” Wiliams said. “They had a life, and they woke up and they had nothing. They were put on a bus to ship to a place that they had never been before. It was sad.”
It wasn’t enough to just give people shelter. Being one of the only Black American Red Cross staff members who was not in the field at the time and having an understanding of Louisiana culture, Heather Nash became critical to cultural integration.
“One thing that I stressed is, these are not Oklahoma Black people. These are Louisiana Black people,” Nash said. “These are people who are by the sea, so they eat a lot of fish. Most are Catholic, so we really got to think about the people we are serving.”
She said most of the products in the care packages were unsuitable for Black skin and hair, which was something she helped rectify by seeking donations from manufacturers and retailers.
There was also a lifestyle difference that had to be accounted for, Williams said.
“Tulsa is really laid back. And, you know, New Orleans is full of life, it has stuff going on all the time,” she said. In the long term, it wasn’t the right fit. “A lot of the people thought that they would make Tulsa their home, but they didn’t. They ended up going back to New Orleans.”
For some, like Monica Burns, Tulsa provided the salvation they needed. Burns, who passed away in 2020, stayed in Tulsa and raised her family. She worked with the Urban League to create a community for other survivors who made T-Town their home.
“Monica liked the simplicity of Tulsa, and she also liked the fact that she was helping people who needed help from her hometown,” Williams said. Burns would go on to throw Mardi Gras parties and dinners with the help of Herbert’s, a longtime Tulsa Cajun restaurant.
It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. The city has rebuilt, its NFL team returned in force winning the Super Bowl five years later and life has mostly gone on. But for Williams, the memory of receiving and helping survivors is something that has and will always stick with her.
“I think about the families we placed in homes in Tulsa, the ones who made it and the ones who wanted to go back,” she said. “I still wonder what happened to them.”
