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Extending an olive branch to NOLA

Thank you, Douglas Brinkley.

I got to hear probably America's most famous historian while I was covering the Smart Growth conference held in Biloxi this week. He's finished up a biography of Teddy Roosevelt (my favorite U.S. president) and told the audience how Roosevelt made Florida's Pelican Island the first national wildlife refuge. So Roosevelt played a part in our getting to watch brown pelicans and other birds soar peacefully over our waterways and beaches, something I get to enjoy on almost a daily basis during my walks.

But what I was really thankful for was Brinkley's appreciation for South Mississippians and how we acted and reacted during and after Hurricane Katrina. The author of "The Great Deluge" is working on the second volume to his book about New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"I love the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There is something special about it," he said, something you can't find in California or Maine. He told how the Fire Dog Saloon in Bay St. Louis was where he wrote a good amount of his books, "from 8:30 to 2," sitting in the same booth and ordering barbecued chicken wings and iced tea.

He recalled how Camille once was the benchmark for the biggest threat on the Coast. If something survived Camille, you betcha it would survive anything.

Brinkley, a former professor of history at Tulane, said he was one of those New Orleanians who "evacuated vertically," going to One River Place, next to the Hilton on Canal Street, to wait out the storm.

We all know the outcome. He knew we know. He referred to New Orleans' "Lego levees" and the lack of leadership when the floodwaters came. But he was impressed with how South Mississippians came together to help each other. He spoke well of our mayors. He told moving vignettes of bravery, sacrifice and loss. Those of us who were here know our own examples.

But Brinkley's words helped heal me more than he will know. For a long time after Katrina, it was hard for me to go back to New Orleans. It stemmed from the hurtful words of a certain now-former Louisiana governor and a current U.S. senator from Louisiana, suggesting that Mississippi wasn't playing fair when it came to getting recovery help. It was solidified when somebody told me of a party they attended where a famous New Orleanian parroted these politicians' words and added a few vitriolic ones of her own. Did all Louisianans feel that way? All New Orleanians?

On Aug. 28, 2005, in many people's opinions, Mississippi was something of a cross between Dogpatch and a Third World country. Hear these comments, and suddenly we were prep school-perfect Connecticut.

I have gradually gone back to that city that I do truly love. A couple of timid trial runs showed that the average New Orleanian holds no animosity toward me or anybody else from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In fact, we ask how things are going. Perhaps emotions have calmed, perhaps we've all come to realize it's better to get along, that pointing fingers helps nothing.

For years before the storm, before I started to write a check at a New Orleans store, I would ask if they would take one from out of town. "Honey," they'd reply, "Gulfport is a suburb of New Orleans."

Now, I'm perfectly comfortable going back. After all, it's only an extension of my own town.