Flood waters washed away millions of memories

BATON ROUGE, La. -- They had hours, or minutes, or seconds to decide. Katrina was closing in.

Of all the things they possessed, what to save?

They took Virgin Mary necklaces and shiny dress shoes, worn baby pictures and loving letters. They took terriers and Game Boys, cellphones and birth certificates.

The wind, the water, the sludge, and the looters took everything else.

These things, hastily snatched up or carefully deliberated over, are all they have left of their old lives. They cling to them in highway motels and emergency shelters -- shards of the past, familiar and precious.

Rudy Aguilar took a Bible no bigger than his hand, pulled apart and stained brown from 10 years of praying. ''It used to be white," he said. ''But see all the oils in your hands? It's been penetrated."

Aguilar, 59, lived in Metairie, just outside New Orleans. He was staying in a motel near Interstate 10 in Gonzales, near Baton Rouge, with his fiancee and her family.

The Bible had belonged to Aguilar's wife, Ruth. She died in 1995.

''It was a Friday," he said. ''I came home for lunch. I was calling for her. She loved her fish pond out back, and I looked for her out there. She was face-down in the pond. She was cleaning it and she hadn't turned the switch off, and she got electrocuted. This Bible used to be hers, and well, I picked it up, and ever since then, it's been a thing of mine that I won't go out or do anything unless I take an hour to pray with this Bible."

Zachary Bourg, 9, took his PlayStation II and his favorite games: Star Wars Episode III, Star Wars Starfighters, and Madden NFL 2003. His family had evacuated their home in St. Bernard Parish many times, so he knew the drill. But he forgot the $60 he had spent months saving. He remembered it as he sat in a cafe in Gonzales, near the relatives' house where his family is staying.

''Do you think it's still there?" he asked his father, David. He wondered if the money could be dry-cleaned when they get back to New Orleans in a year or so -- if looters don't take it before then.

Rhonda Smith took the platinum and onyx ring that has been in her family for generations.

''It was passed from my great-grandmother to my grandmother and my daddy wore it, and my mom," said Smith, from the Gentilly area of New Orleans. She sat outside the shower tent at the River Center emergency shelter in Baton Rouge.

''I've had that ring since I was 17, and I'm 48 now, so you know I value it," she said. ''It had a cameo in it, but I had that replaced with a diamond. My daughter loses jewelry. She's irresponsible. So I'm trying to pass it on to my grandbaby, Lanaya. She's 8 months."

Tamra Roney, 16, left her home in St. Bernard Parish with music by Ryan Cabrera and TLC, and her Glow by J. Lo perfume. She also took three pictures of her father, Ricky, who died of cancer in 1999, and seven pictures of her mother, Melinda, who she said ''got in an accident" and died three years later.

There is one photograph of her mother on her wedding day in 1988, wearing a dark dress with cream flowers -- ''a simple dress, nothing extravagant," said Roney, who had just finished shopping for clothes to wear to her new school in Destrehan, 20 miles from New Orleans. In the picture, her mother is standing with a big smile on her face, happy and pregnant.

There is a picture of Roney's father at church, sitting in a wheelchair because he was too sick to stand. And another picture of the whole family, fresh from a swim on a camping trip. Roney can't remember where that one was taken. She was only 8 at the time.

''They're, like, my favorite pictures," Roney said. ''That's what I remember them by. I don't have the other pictures, so I feel I have to cherish these."

Rachel Honnicutt took the letters her mother wrote her this summer. She was living in a hotel in New Orleans East, ''a kind of halfway house for people that got [welfare] and stuff," she said. ''I like to travel around."

There were no phones at the New Orleans hotel, so her mother wrote her from Sarasota, Fla., once a week. In the letters, she ''told me that she loved me and missed me," said Honnicutt, 35.

''Every mother worries about their child," she said. ''My mother's always got some pretty stationery. She would send the letters to that address, and if I wasn't there, they would hold them for me."

Honnicutt was sleeping in the shelter in River City. She thought she might go see her mother now, but she wasn't sure.

Tom Westergard took nothing but regrets, and a circular gash over his right eye.

''I should have evacuated and took a few things, but I thought I'd be just at the top of the surge," he said. ''I put everything up high."

He lived 300 yards from shore in Long Beach, Miss. He was on the second floor when he saw the water rise and carry houses past his window. Then his house tilted off its foundation and poured him out into the tidal surge.

''What did I take?" he said, standing outside a shelter in Gulfport, Miss., his voice quavering. ''My cat."

But then Westergard went under, and he let go of the cat to grab at some wood. She ran back along the debris and jumped back through the window. She was lost.

For some evacuees, there is nothing but time to think about the things they should have saved.

Oside Brown, 61, from Kenner, La., took only the clothes on his back. He went to his meat-cutting job in a supermarket the morning the storm hit. He was late, so he didn't bother loading up his car. But if he could do it again, he knows what he would take.

''I would take my record box," he said. ''My Alpine speakers, and my Alpine record box. I like the blues. B.B. King. Now what was that record we played the other night? Little Johnny Taylor. And O.V. Wright."

Harold Isadore, 47, a refrigeration technician, didn't take anything, either. He has been thinking about the dining set that sat in the Carrollton house he shared with his parents. He is sure the furniture, and the whole house, was submerged by the flood.

''My grandmother bought that set in the 50s," he said. ''That was antique. That's solid wood, man. A set like that would cost you $4,000, $5,000 now. She didn't buy nothin' cheap."

Isadore said he couldn't bear to see what might have happened to that dining set.

''I don't want to go back to my house," he said. ''It was a nice house. I really don't want to see it. I know it's all messed up."

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com.