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After Katrina, Baton Rouge Weathers a Storm of Its Own
In the aftermath of the hurricane, baton Rouge opened its doors to evacuees. William Dickerson, owner of Plank Road Cleaners in Baton Rouge, chats with employee Diane Johnson, a New Orleans evacuee.
(Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)
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"It redefined the relationship between class and structure," he says. "Everything was on the table for redefining."
ValaRay Irvin is a psychologist in the counseling center at Southern. She says she was amazed by how well the students seemed to cope in the beginning. They had youth on their side, she says.
"For a long time afterwards," she says, "there was this illusion by people that they were going to return to New Orleans. A lot of people stayed frozen for a long time."
But then another reality came into view for the students, she says: The deeper into the school year it got, the more anti-depression medication she prescribed. "There was a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder," she says.
One of the effects of Katrina was that it brought plenty of job applicants to Baton Rouge, even if the city didn't need them.
William Dickerson runs Plank Road Cleaners, and he quickly hired a New Orleans evacuee. It was not a pleasant experience. "She came in with these slick New Orleans ways," he says, standing in the shade in front of his shop. "We started missing things, clothes. I noticed her father and sister always hanging around.
"It was awful," he says. "I finally fired her."
But he did not want to prejudge all the evacuees. His most recent hire is Diana Johnson, 46, a presser from New Orleans. "She's a true professional," he says. "Works very hard."
Dickerson, who spent years as a Baton Rouge detective, said it galled him when some New Orleanians, arriving after the hurricane, judged him as being "slow and country," as he puts it.
"Hey, I may have been born in the woods -- but not the backwoods," he says. "I wrote the book on crime here."
