After 45 hours on a bus, these evacuees find generosity, but more frustration, in Boston
First in an occasional series
FRAMINGHAM -- For Ray Garland and Tamara Bernard and her six sons, the unexpected trip from their native New Orleans to Boston began shortly before Hurricane Katrina struck, when a dozen people crowded into Garland's mother's van and drove four hours over clogged roads to Baton Rouge, La., which is usually less than an hour away. The trip ended at 10 a.m. Saturday when, tired and hungry and carrying blankets and backpacks, 45 hours after they left Baton Rouge, they stepped off a bus in South Station and hugged the minister who brought them here.
In that moment, this family of eight started the fitful process of rebuilding their lives. Neither Bernard, a 33-year-old data processing clerk, nor Garland, a 28-year-old construction worker, had traveled outside Louisiana before. ''I'm depressed," Garland had said by telephone from a Baton Rouge shelter. ''You don't know if you go this way or that way. It's really confusing."
Over the next few days they'd experience disappointment and generosity and hope. They'd despair of coming to Boston at all and later talk about expecting a white Christmas. They'd come thinking the West Somerville Church of the Nazarene had stable living quarters for them and instead find a hastily constructed room in the church basement lined with canvas cots and good intentions run amiss. An Ashland businesswoman turned housing matchmaker would ferry them in the wee, dark hours of Sunday to the Sheraton Framingham, where they still expected to be sleeping last night.
''This is the worst two weeks of my life," Bernard said. ''I'm tired of crying."
The 1,500-mile odyssey began with a phone call.
The Rev. Mark Fowler, eager to help hurricane victims, contacted Nadine Heaps, president of the Ashland Business Association, after reading an account of her effort to find homes for evacuees in the Shout Out USA shelter in Baton Rouge. He'd convert space in his church, he said. He could take a couple with six children. A shelter worker passed along the offer to the family. They knew no one in Massachusetts, but, anxious to leave a city filled with evacuees, they said yes. ''We were taking a chance," Garland said. The reverend paid their bus fare.
All day Friday until 1 a.m. Saturday, while the family was on the bus, parishioners cleared one third of the basement, erected walls with insulation and paneling, stocked a shelf with groceries, and put out small piles of used clothing. A shower, Fowler hoped, would be built soon. He came to South Station at 4 a.m. Saturday, when the family expected to arrive, still wearing Friday's shirt and tie.
''Sunday is going to be the big day of receiving. Every single [church] family is supposed to be bringing at least one bag of groceries," Fowler said. ''When they step off that bus, they'll be treated like kings and queens."
Meanwhile, the family of eight was traveling through 11 states with $20 and a prepaid cellphone. They bought hot dogs for each and potato chips to share. Fellow passengers gave them beef jerky. Their bus pulled into Atlanta so late that they missed their connection, which added more than five hours to the trip.
Far behind was the life they'd built in New Orleans, the new four-bedroom townhouse they'd rented since April, when they got a federal subsidy and left public housing. They paid $4,400 for a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix, Bernard's first car. Russell, 15, was a high school sophomore, an ''A" student playing varsity football. His brothers had started new schools. Now they wonder about the fate of their house and assume that the car, parked in the hard-hit Ninth Ward, is destroyed. ''Just when things were looking up," Garland said, ''you lose everything."
In Baton Rouge, Bernard and Garland and the boys first stayed with Garland's brother, bringing to more than 30 the number of people crammed in a three-bedroom house. From there they went to the shelter established in a function hall after Katrina hit. For three days, Bernard said, she stood in line for food stamps only to be turned away because her food-stamp card was in New Orleans.
They still worry about Bernard's brother, who needed surgery after cutting his leg walking through filthy flood water, and about a newborn niece hospitalized for an infection.
Their concerns were basic when they disembarked the bus in Boston -- six boys, ages 6 to 15, and two adults, in donated T-shirts because they left everything in New Orleans. ''We need a bath," Garland said.
The first stop was Mike's Restaurant, a short walk from the church. The youngest boys, 7-year-old twins Devin and Tevin and 6-year-old Isaiah, scampered ahead, peering in store windows. ''They think it's a vacation," Bernard said.
At Mike's, the boys asked about grits, and everyone filled up on pancakes and eggs and bacon and sausage, on the house. Bernard called her mother in Texas. ''Tell her I'm scared," Garland said. He and Bernard have been together two years. The boys call him ''Daddy."
The pastor showed them the narrow space carved from the church's multipurpose room. He showed them the church's kitchen and rest rooms. ''Do they have red beans here?" Garland asked.
Right away, he and Bernard said later, they felt the setup wouldn't work.
''If we had known," said Garland, ''we probably wouldn't have come."
''It was like going from one shelter to another," said Bernard. ''Just a little more space."
They showered at the home of the pastor's cousin and left a message for Charmelle Young, their contact at the Baton Rouge shelter. They finally talked to her late Saturday night. It was after midnight when Young reached Heaps, and Heaps drove the family to the hotel.
''We have to learn from this," said Heaps. The minister's ''heart was in the right place. I don't think he called in the right resources."
''I'm heartbroken that this has happened," Fowler said. ''Communication with individuals other than the family was not clear."
''If he wasn't ready for us," Bernard said, ''he should have said."
In one of three adjoining hotel rooms, Garland sat Sunday watching the New Orleans Saints football team defeat the Carolina Panthers. Bernard and the boys were getting ready for a hotel van to take the family to
''I feel much better," Bernard said. ''My children are finally getting to sleep."
Outside the Wal-Mart store on Route 9, Ellen Callas, the hotel's general manager, handed Bernard a $2,000 gift card. ''How many zeroes?" a stunned Russell asked. Wal-Mart would also give them a 20 percent discount.
With two shopping carts, the family cruised the store, getting underwear, jeans, T-shirts, and shoes. Little boys, laughing, hung off Garland's cart. ''I'm exhausted," he said. ''I've got a headache."
Bernard let her three youngest select one toy apiece. She rejected a car as too big, a train set as having too many pieces, and a toy gun on principle. ''You want something you can carry with you until we get our own house," she said. Finally, Isaiah chose a doctor kit, Tevin a Batman mask, and Devin a small car. The total bill, including discount, was $562.79.
Yesterday morning, as he does every day, Garland read the Bible, this time Psalm 18: ''The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer." The boys started their third week without school.
On the day's agenda was a trip with Heaps to look at housing. In the afternoon, they looked at several possibilities. ''We have to find the right home for this family," Heaps said.
Garland's mind flitted from one concern to the next. ''I have to find a job," he said. For a decade he's hung Sheetrock. Now he's an unemployed construction worker worried about cold winters and the tools he left behind, homeless and carless and fretting about how to manage everyday logistics once a new normalcy comes.
''If we were to get on the Interstate we'd be lost," he said. ''Things are looking better now, but ain't too much changed. I'm just happy we're all right."
''We do want to go back to New Orleans," Bernard said. ''We're trying to do the best for the children. We're just trying to get them in school. We don't want them to fall behind." 