April's Story

"I was working in New Orleans at a little restaurant in the French Quarter and we heard that the storm was coming. We didn’t think it was going to be any big deal so we were having a party at the restaurant. We were having hurricanes on special… we boarded up the windows. I left for home that Saturday night and stayed up to watch the news and the next morning they had a mandatory evacuation for St. Tammany Parrish. I got the kids, we got a couple of outfits of clothes which is what we always do, thinking that we’d be back in a couple of days… loaded up the dogs. Got stuck on the highway and had to go halfway up Mississippi before we could turn west and what is normally a 3 and a half drive to my parents house ended up taking me 12 hours, with 2 dogs and 2 kids in the car and long lines for gas… it was a rough trip. But we made it to my parent’s house. You couldn’t find out how anybody was but you could text message on the cell phones. And after about 4 or 5 days we got a text message from one of my son’s friends who said that he could finally get to my house and he said there was five feet in my house. I lost everything.

You make plans and you think what am I going to wear… okay, I can wear this… but then… I don’t have that anymore. Or you are in the kitchen wanting to make cupcakes and you look at your pans and you realize that you don’t have a cupcake pan anymore. It is the silly things like that that you miss, in addition to the kid’s baby pictures, videos of my daughter’s plays that are gone, my son’s power-lifting… all those videos are gone. I took my box of important papers, two changes of clothes, my kids and my dogs… and that’s all I have left.

We were staying in Lake Charles, that’s where my parents are. I rented a house and I got a few things lent to me, some clothes and then Rita hit. And I left and I went up to Natchootshis and I stayed in my daughter’s dorm room for a week and I was told that I couldn’t go back to Lake Charles for 30 days because there wasn’t going to be any lights. My son was pretty happy about that, he was miserable at Lake Charles and he told me he was coming back to Slidell no matter what because he was going to graduate with his class. So we came back to Slidell and we lived with friends and family and just kind of bounced around for about 6 months Sam moved in with some of his friends and I had Chelsea with me. We’re together now, but it’s hard and I’m working 2 jobs. I never even see them. It’s hard but I have to do it. I’m not going to fail them…………."


How You Can Help

April really needs help with paying for Emily and Sam's education. Emily is a sophomore in college and Sam is a high school senior this year. We are trying to set up a small fund to help with their tuition costs.