DMN’s Texan of the Year: Houston
Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends….here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we areas my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends
- Green Day, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”
I have a couple different versions of that Green Day song on my iPod, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that I ‘m never going to be able to hear either version without thinking about what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans and the long-lasting, perhaps permanent effect it has had on the Houston area.
Even as Katrina was rolling into the New Orleans area, few if any of us here in the Houston area had any inkling of what the days and weeks to come would hold in store for us. How could we have even begun to anticipate that within a matter of days, upwards of 150,000 people would descend upon us?
Honey, it looks like we’re going to have company for dinner…a LOT of company….
In 2005, Houston became the heart of Texas.
For resilience, resourcefulness and good old Texas neighborliness on a scale that did the whole state proud, Houston is the 2005 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.
To this day, an estimated 150,000 survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita call the Houston area home, and surveys show that most of them plan to stay. When Katrina hurled them, battered and destitute, onto Houston’s doorstep, Houston met the challenge with the largest shelter operation in the nation’s history. Singling out Houston is no slight to the scores of other communities that opened their arms to the storms’ victims, including those right here in North Texas. They, too, performed nobly and deserve vigorous applause. But the demands on Houston, by dint of simple geography, were of a stunningly higher magnitude.
Talk to the people at the center of the relief effort, and, over and over, you’ll hear words that echo those of Issa Dadoush, the city of Houston’s director of building services: “These are Americans. They’re our neighbors. If not Houston, who else?”
Or, as Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said, “We had no choice. It was just something that needed to be done.”
It was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Time and again, I’ve heard people from New Orleans say something along the lines of “You realize that we never would have done the same thing for y’all, right?”…and perhaps that’s true. Of course, that never really mattered to anyone here. New Orleans is only about six hours east of Houston on I-10. But for a turn or a jog in Katrina’s path, she would have devastated the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Who knows what would have happened if that had happened? Thankfully it didn’t, but the devastation and the human toll in New Orleans was such that it simply couldn’t be ignored, especially by those of us so close to New Orleans.
No city was better situated- geographically, financially, and in terms of available housing- to help in the aftermath of Katrina, and so there was never any question that Houston would become Ground Zero for the relief effort. This area has grown and changed in character since Katrina obliterated New Orleans. Yes, we’ve also had to deal with some of the bad apples from New Orleans, but the the vast majority of refugees are simply folks who want to be able to put their lives back together. In the two offices I work out of, we have at least three transfers from New Orleans- area offices. You’ll find similar stories all over the Houston area.
Overall, it’s been an exercise in change and patience for everyone concerned, but I think that in the final analysis, we here in the Houston area are better for it. We should feel good about what we did to help when help was so desperately needed. Perhaps it might not have happened in the same way had roles been reversed, but those of us who helped never looked at it in that light. What was done was what needed to be done. Period.
To get it done, “we” became far more than government. The extraordinary effort depended on churches, companies, nonprofits and tens of thousands of ordinary people. Commandeered by fate, they responded with the very qualities that distinguish a Texan of the Year: trailblazing, independence, staring down adversity, and affecting or influencing lives.
In the office of Houston Mayor Bill White’s chief of staff sits a large, glossy sign that admonishes: “Put Your Smile On - Company’s Coming.” It’s a souvenir of the city’s PR campaign before the 2004 Super Bowl. It’s also exactly the mind-set Houston’s leaders summoned after the call came from the governor’s office to Judge Eckels at 3 a.m. on Aug. 31: A convoy of buses bearing traumatized survivors of New Orleans’ Superdome would strike out that day, bound for the Astrodome.
Hey, it was the right thing to do, and both White and Eckels set a superb example. They knew that, if people understood the magnitude of the need that it would be met and then some. No, things weren’t perfect, and in some cases they weren’t even very good, but when has an entire metropolitan area EVER had to deal with a disaster of this magnitude in such a compressed time frame?
Houston should be proud of what it has accomplished. The work is hardly over, but at least the crisis of September has diminished- and for that all of us should be grateful.
