A Toast to Tenacity

Before the Hurricane, Vincent's City Club Was the Place to Be for Lovers Of Music and Camaraderie. A Year Later and 80 Miles Away, It Still Is.

BATON ROUGE, La.

Someone thought Scottie, a kitchen worker, had bolted for his native Haiti.

Maria, the bar manager, left that last night saying she had to check on her daughter and grandbaby.

Franklin, who worked the front door, was making his way toward Georgia.

By the third day after the hurricane, they all knew there was no coming back. Vincent's City Club -- a swanky nightspot on the east side of New Orleans known for jazz, crawfish and its cornbread -- was dead.

Henry Augustus, a co-owner, had phone numbers for the staff. But nobody could find Henry. And he had lost his phone anyway.

Vincent Butler, the other owner -- and namesake of the place -- was on the road to Largo, Md., where his sister lives. Getting his Aunt Consuella and himself to safety.

Once in Largo, Butler saw it on the TV screen: the "Read Blvd." street sign, waves of water rolling over it. The club was on Read. Butler squinted and saw what he didn't want to see: everything underwater.

And in his mind's eye, he feared to see more -- bottles of champagne and cognac surfing on the fetid water; the leather-bound scrapbook, with the club's history in photos, gone like everything else.

"You sat there like a heavyweight boxer who had been knocked out," he says. "I was sick from then on."

A street sign.

A grave marker.