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New Orleans family starting over in Fayetteville

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizen.com

New Orleans residents Winston and Angelique David had sent their children out of the city before Hurricane Katrina hit, knowing that the storm could be a bad one.

On Tuesday, after the storm had passed, the couple listened to the radio and heard that the water would start rising again. Their house, which they had only lived in for a little over a month, had already flooded and around noon on that Tuesday, the Davids left their home and started their attempt to make their way out of the city.

Winston, who had spent 13 years in the Guyana military, emptied bottles that they could use as flotation devices and tied them together with laces from the shoes and sneakers that they would likely never wear again. “I asked him if he really thought we’d need them (flotation devices) but he told me not to worry,” Angelique said of her husband.

The two collected what they could, including food and water, and started to make their journey on their children’s bicycles. By the time they made the interstate, after traveling through various depths of water, the pair had to abandon the bicycles and start hitchhiking.

One driver took them to a Winn-Dixie store, which the couple suspects the driver was going to loot. Another driver, a woman, picked them up in a bread truck and drove them as far as Sorrento, a city on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, before getting a flat tire.

Eventually, they found a ride to the airport where Winston’s boss had rented a car for his employee. From there, the Davids were able to make it to the home of David’s sister, Sabrina Bright, in Fayetteville. The children joined their parents within the next week and the family is starting to put their lives together, albeit over 450 miles from their home.

The Davids and their children — Ryanell and Rudi, both students at Fayette Middle School, and Randall, now a junior at Fayette County High School — are currently living with 13 other people in her sister’s house.

Winston has found a job with a satellite company and Angelique was at the Fayette County Public Library Friday typing up her resume. She was a pediatric dental assistant as well as an operator of a children’s entertainment company with her husband.

She expressed her gratitude for the assistance she and her family have received from the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and DFCS as well as the library and its director Chris Snell.

“Everybody in Georgia has been so great,” David said, her eyes getting misty. “My arms aren’t big enough to hug everybody.”

The family’s house and automobiles were insured, so David knows that they are better off than some of the victims of the storm and eventually they will be able to have a normal life again. She also stated that the family is considering staying in Fayette County, where the children have really taken to the schools and where her siblings and parents both reside.

She also knows that she will carry a lot of tough memories with her for the rest of her life. She recalled the tearful phone calls to her sister, asking her to alert the Red Cross to their whereabouts, while still stuck in New Orleans. She also will never forget the sight of her ceiling caving in or the awful smell of the water she and her husband waded through.

“It was an ugly day, the day we left,” David said, recalling those horrors, as well as the rampant looting they witnessed.

On the day that this reporter met Angelique David, it was sunny and mild without a cloud in the sky. Her family is safe and there is a roof over their heads. There are things she may never forget but there is also hope and the knowledge that people, some she only met recently, will help take care of her.