81-year-old priest happy to be home after Katrina's wrath
Catholic Spirit, September 2006, In Our World
By Priscilla Greear
Catholic News Service
A year ago Father Royce Mitchell, now 81, walked in pitch-black darkness along the interstate for some three miles with thousands of others, carrying an overnight bag and praying during the mass exodus from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
He ate one granola bar from the box he had packed and gave five away ββ along with the rest of his food ββ to those around him in the crowd of nearly 5,000.
"I was thinking about everything and praying and wondering how in the world we would get out of this. The lack of communication was the worst thing. We didn't know what was going to happen to us," he told a reporter from The Georgia Bulletin, newspaper of the Atlanta Archdiocese.
Father Mitchell, a New Orleans archdiocesan priest who grew up in Atlanta, reflected upon last year's disaster and his efforts to rebuild his life and help others in an interview in his one-bedroom apartment at the Chateau of Notre Dame, a senior continuing care community. He moved there following the storm and now serves as chaplain.
The priest said his home in the Gentilly neighborhood had been soaked in nine feet of water for nearly five weeks from levee breaks. But despite the water damage he found his New Testament without a single water stain in his flooded study.
"My other Bible, books and everything else were destroyed," he said. "How it survived no one knows ββ just a sort of miracle. It lifts up your faith and is a sign of hope."
Another sign of hope was a tarnished metal cross he found on top of his flooded bed in the home he had rented for 11 years while serving at nearby parishes.
He also salvaged a chalice and a silver pitcher, but he lost nearly everything else ββ clothes, books, furniture, all his family and ordination pictures and certificates, and his Navy discharge papers.
Father Mitchell temporarily evacuated to the Atlanta area to be with family members but moved back to Louisiana last October.
When he returned to his home he was shocked to see everything destroyed, neighborhoods devastated and nothing left intact, but he was also surprised to see his room where his bed was made and everything was as he left it but covered with water, mud, oil and grease.
The World War II Navy veteran said this natural disaster was more distressing than when, as an 18-year-old sailor, he was attacked by a Nazi submarine in the North Atlantic Ocean.
"This was more traumatic," said the priest. "Everything is jerked out from under you, and you end up as a homeless person and don't know what the future will hold."
As Katrina approached, he stayed in New Orleans to celebrate a Saturday funeral Mass Aug. 27. The next day he celebrated Mass and secured the church around 11 a.m. He packed an overnight bag with a battery-powered radio and moved to an empty rectory on higher ground where he had weathered storms before.
Katrina slammed into the coast of Louisiana about 7 a.m. Aug. 29. Rain poured, heavy winds blew and the rectory's electricity went out, but after the storm abated, Father Mitchell thought everything would be all right.
"If the levees had not been broken we would have been OK. There was no water in the streets Monday night after the storm. Also I figured I'd be around to help in case anyone needed anything," he said.
He grew concerned as the water rose in the streets, surrounding houses on lower ground, and crept toward the top steps of the rectory.
On Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 31, he was picked up by two volunteers riding by in a boat and dropped off at an exit ramp off the interstate where evacuees were bused to an overpass and told they would be picked up and brought to the Superdome. Hours later, police officers directed the evacuees to backtrack and walk three miles to another exit.
The next day they boarded a bus that took them to a shelter in Texas, where Father Mitchell was picked up by a family member. He stayed in Texas for a few days before going to Atlanta.
A year later, he remains grateful for all the kindness he was shown throughout the evacuation.
"Kindness was everywhere. People would come up and say, βCan I get you anything?' That was beautiful. People wanted to help you," he recalled.
Family members encouraged him to stay in Georgia, but the priest felt called back to Louisiana.
"I'm retired and I'm still active, and I'll stay as long as I physically can. That's the reason I came back," he said. "I'm happy with what I'm doing, satisfied I can be back and can be of help and service. This is where I belong."