The Category 5 General

"He was not too hot on this Army thing," Honore says.

But he found it to be a calling.

"The Army gave me open sky.

"I got in the military and I liked what I was doing and the opportunity to be judged by your performance as opposed to other measures." He is talking about race, but he does not want to elaborate. Rather than talk about the racism of those days, he says, "I'm more about the future than the past."

But his past as a farmer lives on. At his home in Atlanta, he is known for the vegetable garden he maintains down the street, where he harvests potatoes, peppers, okra and corn. It's his form of relaxation and exercise, he says.

"He's a very kind person and brings back vegetables from his garden," says Col. Robert Minor, a neighbor, who's received tomatoes and cucumbers from the general.

Honore has raised four children, including a son, Michael, who is an Army sergeant in Baghdad. His youngest child, Stephen, is only 15, and Honore is hoping he'll chose the military too. He jokingly calls it "the family business."

"But that'll be his choice," Honore says.

One of his daughters, Stephanie, lives in Florida. The other, Kimberly, lives in New Orleans. She was out of town when Hurricane Katrina struck, but her pets were stranded for several days in her Jefferson Parish apartment. She asked her dad to save them.

But he was so busy, what with the city descending into mayhem and evacuees being moved by scores of thousands out to cities and towns around the country and troops pouring in and the rescue of humans still underway.

But this week, 10 days into their abandonment, Kimberly's pets were finally on his agenda. Honore found himself with a bit of downtime. As he tells it, he chuckled at what he knows may sound silly to some. It was "a cat and hamster rescue," he says, freeing Gumbo and Hammie from their own post-Katrina hell.