NEW ORLEANS COMING BACK

I graduated from High School in Houma, Louisiana, about sixty miles from New Orleans. New Orleans was the city where you went to soak up the city's history, to enjoy zydeco and jazz music on Bourbon Street, to watch the artists around Jackson Square, and to sit on the levee, watching the traffic on the mighty Mississippi. Though I left there two years after graduation, I have never left the area in my heart, still have good friends there, and love to visit. It was a nightmare to see what damage Katrina did to my city, and now what BP had done to the Gulf.

Tonight on television, I watched a program entitled "New Orleans Rising" about a section of New Orleans I must admit I knew nothing about. Ponchartrain Park, with a view of the Lake from second stories, had been established in 1951 and middle-class African-Americans grew with the community, raised children to become doctors, layers, contractors, and actors. It was not crime ridden because the residents were law-abiding citizens who wanted a good place to rear their children. And those children, no matter to what heights they had risen in the world, still called this community home. It was heartbreaking to see it virtually destroyed by that hurricane, and ignored when the officials, federal, city and state, began to rebuild the commercial and more affluent white neighborhoods.

This show will be repeated on CNN several times this week--and hopefully beyond--and I'm urging you to view it. It is a story of family, community, determination, hard work, and the true American courage and faith to never give up.