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DEL.ICIO.USCHAPTER 22: TRIUMPHS, TEARS AND CHANGED LIVES
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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New Orleans — On Tuesday morning, Feb. 14, the sun shone in a crisp blue sky as dozens of people wearing scrubs and business suits gathered on the rooftop of Tulane Hospital’s Saratoga Street parking garage. In a few hours, Tulane would resume business, the first hospital to reopen in downtown New Orleans.
There to celebrate were Tulane staff and Hospital Corporation of America executives. They laughed and hugged, some seeing each other for the first time since Hurricane Katrina had changed their lives more than five months before.
“You smelled worse than me,” a physician said to a paramedic. “There’s a certain aroma missing. We’re all clean.”
Suddenly a helicopter appeared on the horizon, hovered above, then landed in the middle of the garage roof, its deafening rotor wash knocking some people nearly off their feet. The crowd roared when out of the aircraft stepped John Holland, the Georgia medical pilot — “The Man” — who had served during the rooftop rescue as air traffic controller.
Holland brought with him the huge American flag that had been draped over the hospital the week its employees and patients were stranded inside. Solemnly, he helped carry the flag on a stretcher across the roof and into the arms of those who would rehang it.
A champagne toast followed. Then everyone went downstairs to a tent outside the emergency room to await the arrival of Mayor Ray Nagin. The celebration was quintessential HCA. The tent was decked out with palm trees, chandeliers, hanging plants and refreshments. A Dixieland band played as more than 200 medical staff, seated on bleachers, did the wave. When the mayor arrived, the crowd hooted and hollered. Nagin and Mel Lagarde, the HCA executive who had helped run the Tulane evacuation, embraced.
“New Orleans is back!” Nagin shouted. “And we’re going to take it to the next level with HCA driving us all the way!”
With a snip of giant scissors, Nagin then cut the green ribbon stretched in front of the emergency room entrance. The ER, operating rooms, ICU and one-third of the hospital’s beds were now open. Full service is expected to resume in late summer or early fall.
Across the street, Charity Hospital — and its future — stood in stark contrast. A Georgia consulting firm has concluded the 67-year-old building is “unsalvageable” and not worth the cost to repair. There are preliminary plans with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build a new public hospital on a 37-acre plot of land a few blocks away. It will not bear the Charity name, and could take more than five years to complete.
In the meantime, a reduced medical staff is offering emergency medical services out of an old Lord & Taylor store next to the Superdome. A scaled-down trauma center has temporarily opened in leased space at another hospital.
As the Tulane party spilled onto a side street, “Big Charity” looked forgotten and forlorn, like an old grande dame whose glory days had passed. There was no music, no celebration. No workers had labored to clean her up or bring her back to life. Rather, Charity was alone, like a sick patient who has finally been taken off life support.
In the end, Tulane got all 178 of its patients out alive. All were safely transported to other hospitals. Among them was a 15-year-old boy on life support who was awaiting a heart transplant. He has since gotten a new heart at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and is doing well. The rescue operation involved 231 helicopter landings and cost HCA at least $2.7 million.
Six of Charity’s 347 patients died before they could be evacuated. Two were nursing home patients who died in the Tulane parking garage while waiting for helicopters. Four others — all critical — died in the hospital the first two days after the storm. An unknown number of patients, like Preston Johnson, died after their evacuation. But so many more lived, thanks to the countless doctors, nurses, pilots, administrators, family members and others who put patients’ lives above their own.
Mel Lagarde and Ben deBoisblanc were on opposite sides of the street during the storm. Each had been terrified patients would die. Each stayed until the end, protecting his hospital — Lagarde at Tulane, Dr. Ben at Charity. They didn’t know each other, yet their lives were intertwined by Katrina, and since have taken similar turns. Each has begun to rebuild his life, with a new sense of purpose.
One day last October, six weeks after the hurricane, Mel Lagarde was feeling the pressure to find the right people to chair his committees. The list of positions stared at him in large letters from a chart that hung on the wall.
After Katrina, Lagarde’s life took on a complexity he never imagined. On Sept. 30, the mayor named him co-chairman of a commission to help rebuild the city.
Sitting in an HCA office in Covington, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, Lagarde grew tearful as he recalled the images of his city under water: “Pictures can’t capture the death, the smells, the sounds,” he said. “You were speechless, breathless.”
Soon after his evacuation, Lagarde settled into life as a bachelor, his wife and children scattered. Their house in New Orleans was uninhabitable. A vacation home in coastal Mississippi had been leveled.
It was OK for the time being to live alone in a hotel room, because the rebuilding of the city is a “daunting task,” said Lagarde, who met four times with President Bush before the commission turned over its final report in January.
Last week, the newly re-elected Nagin asked Lagarde to chair the implementation of the plan. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this; 9/11 was a 12-block radius in a town that was mostly still operative,” Lagarde said. “We’re looking at models from World War II where entire cities were obliterated.”
Lagarde doesn’t like to talk about the week he spent at Tulane Hospital or his role in what happened. But he feels the experience helped prepare him for this next phase of life. He’s more comfortable not always being in control. He feels a deeper connection to people, to his city.
“It has made me have a profound bond with the people who were here with me,” he said. “To a certain extent, it bonded me to the city in a different way.” He choked up before continuing.
“It’s fragile now,” Lagarde said softly. “It needs help. There’s so much devastation. There are people whose lives have been destroyed.”
After the storm, he was at the helm of a sinking ship. Yet he and others saved it and pulled others aboard in the process. “You were part of something you never want to go through again,” he said. “But you’re proud to have been a part of it.”
His biggest regret from that week was not getting to know the Charity staff. Even after their sickest patients were gone from Tulane’s rooftop, and they had the chance to leave themselves, Dr. Ben deBoisblanc and others returned to Charity.
“I thought in a world of heroic events, this was like another completely selfless act,” Lagarde said. “To this day, I would love to meet that staff. I would love to tell them, whatever it’s worth, what an honor it was for me to be there and have seen that act.”
He and Dr. Ben didn’t get along on the rooftop. The impassioned Dr. Ben didn’t much like the calm, “cold” corporate executive. At one point, he referred to Lagarde as a “son of a bitch.”
Like Dr. Ben, Lagarde understands that one person’s perception is not necessarily another’s reality. “No one person has the complete view of everything that happened,” he said. But Lagarde saw something in the physician:
“I would hope that when I am acutely ill that I have a doctor like Ben deBoisblanc taking care of me,” Lagarde said. “I want that passion. I want that patient advocacy. I want that person fighting for my life like he was.”
Months after the hurricane, Dr. Ben went back to living on his beloved boat, Creola, in a Lake Pontchartrain marina. He had left the boat the day before Katrina hit and reported to work at Charity. A picture of his late father, who had instilled in him his love for sailing, was one of the few items he left behind. The photo was irreplaceable, but Dr. Ben had a feeling his father would watch over the vessel. Of about 300 boats in the marina, Creola was one of a handful still floating after the storm.
After Katrina, his 14-year-old son was in Houston, his 16-year-old daughter in north Louisiana and he was back on the boat, alone. Several months before, his wife of 20 years had left him. His children have since returned to live with her.
It has been a tough year for Dr. Ben. “My wife left me, I turned 50 and I spent a week in hell.”
But it has also been a year of triumph. “One of the remarkable things about having a mission is that it completely takes your mind off the fact that you haven’t bathed, you’re hungry, you don’t have water, people are dying,” Dr. Ben said. “We had a focus.”
Dr. Ben cried when he left Charity, knowing it might be for the last time. “Even if we built a new facility, part of me would die in that building,” he said. To him, Charity is more than a stately public hospital that has been the lifeline for generations of poor New Orleanians.
“It has a heart and a soul,” he said, “and to abandon it just doesn’t seem like an appropriate way to put it to rest.”
He’s committed to seeing a new Charity take its place, whether the old one gets a face-lift or a new hospital is built. “The option I can’t accept is we don’t need it anymore.”
He realizes the patient population in New Orleans has declined, and no one knows how many people will return. Only about 161,000 — or a third of the city’s population before the storm — have moved back. The pool of doctors, nurses and medical residents has also shrunk.
Although he has not completely resolved for himself what happened on the Tulane rooftop, Dr. Ben was surprised — and humbled — that Lagarde said he would choose him for his doctor.
“It was a difficult time,” he said, tearing up. “I think he understood my passion. For him to say such a kind thing tells me he’s a first-class guy. Like I said, if we could do it all again, we’d all do things differently.” He later added he appreciated “everything everyone did, from Jim Montgomery to Mel Lagarde. But they’re absolutely right. We were totally out of our league. Totally.”
He said the harsh comments about Tulane by Dwayne Thomas, CEO of Charity and its affiliate, University Hospital, were also born of passion.
“I’m a white kid from a middle-class family,” Dr. Ben said. “I believe in what I do, but I don’t live in the other universe.” Thomas, who is black, “grew up in the other universe. I see it as haves and have-nots… . But when you look at the have-nots in New Orleans, most of them are black, and Dwayne feels that pain.”
Thomas may have been “speaking on hearsay” when he said Tulane did not aid the evacuation of Charity, Dr. Ben said. But that’s no different from the media reporting rapes and murders that later turned out to be rumor.
“Those were believable rumors by people who wanted to believe them,” Dr. Ben said. “The stereotype of poor black people in southern Louisiana is they must be murderers and rapists.”
Similarly, he said, it may have been easy for Thomas to believe that the private hospital’s employees were evacuating themselves before his public hospital’s patients. “I could imagine hearing that just burned a hole through him.”
One incident in particular rankled Thomas - but it involved patients from University Hospital, not Charity. He told The New York Times that he put babies from University in boats with their mothers and doctors, “but they were turned around at gunpoint by Tulane police.” Tulane officials say it never happened. But Dr. Brian Barkemeyer, a neonatologist at University, saw six nurses leave with babies, and he saw them return. “They told me when they approached Tulane, guards with guns turned them away.”
Whatever happened, Barkemeyer said, “It probably happened at the hospital security level. I don’t believe it would have been mandated from above.”
When Dr. Ben heard about the babies, he understood Thomas’ outrage, and how the heat of the moment can affect a person’s viewpoint.
Since his evacuation, Dr. Ben has kept a set of keys in his pocket. They belonged to a patient who dropped them as Dr. Ben loaded him into a helicopter the final day of the airlift. He never learned the man’s name, or whether he survived. “They somehow connect me, I guess, to my past — to all those experiences that I had. And I sort of look at them as a bridge to the future.”
Just as that man’s future was uncertain, there are unknowns in his own life. A critical care pul- monologist, he is working in intensive care units in two far-flung hospitals — one public, one private. He remains on the LSU medical school staff.
Other than the end of his marriage, he calls his week trying to save Charity “the most phenomenal experience I’ve had as a human being.”
“I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve never felt more alive. I feel like it’s awakened something inside of me. I have post-traumatic elation disorder.”
Before that week, he was a “techno-geek” working in a technologically driven environment. Patients had become little more than a diagnosis. “When we lost the technology,” he said, his voice catching, “it was as though the patient emerged. The human being had been covered by this veil of technology, and we peeled back the layers and all of a sudden we reconnected.”
There were so many heroes and heroines that week, he said, people who have now lost their jobs. He doesn’t see himself as a hero. “I’m just a schmo schlepping through life.”
There were no bad guys, he said, just a lot of individuals trying to do the right thing in a very bad situation. Together, they achieved something remarkable.
“The story of triumph in our days there was that none of us would have chosen to walk away, to abandon our patients,” he said. “It was so crystal-clear what our responsibility was — that we had been entrusted with these patients, with their lives, with their futures. And that was a trust we were not going to break.”
It was the essence of Charity.
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Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By
May 27, 2006 05:23 PM | Link to this
I want to thanks the people who made it possible for AJC readers to hear this story of struggle from New Orleans. As a wife of a new orleans resident, I find that many people do not understand the magnitude of the disaster and the conditions that so many people endured.
By PJ
May 27, 2006 07:34 PM | Link to this
I live way up north, high and dry, in Missouri. Thank you for putting this in writing for all of us to read. While we (living elsewhere) knew it got really bad in NOLA, this series put the people in the leading roles, rather than the great forces of the storm for the rest of us.
Sometimes I think that what divides us as a nation is not that “we have a problem,” but rather that we differ on “how to solve the problem.” This series of NOLA’s catastrophe paints in clear images that we have to help each other, because no one way will save everybody.
By Stephanie Joy
May 27, 2006 07:43 PM | Link to this
Thank you for writing this compelling story. I hope that everyone has read this and will remember the compassion and grace that all the hospital workers, in every New Orleans hospital, showed. Their selflessness has really made me step back and re-evaluate my life & how I would have acted in that situation. These doctors, nurses, residents were angels who were doing Gods work in a place where many felt was God forsaken.
I recently contacted Dr. Ben via email and he really is a genuine kindred spirit. I wish him all the best in the future and I know if I ever was in need of a doctor, I would want him by my side.
This was fabulous. Thank you for the story. It was one that needed to be told.
By Mike
May 28, 2006 09:32 AM | Link to this
This was a very moving story, I am so sorry that the people had to go through this. Their goverment failed them, I don’t understand had they could have elected Ray Nagin mayor again.
By John Marchand
May 28, 2006 01:39 PM | Link to this
What a fitting ending the comments by Dr. deBoisblanc make. I’m sure the “post-traumatic elation disorder” and the “we reconnected” are not coincidental. No matter how meaningful our lives have been, when we connect on such a level the meaning increases.
Thank you.
By dawn
May 28, 2006 04:37 PM | Link to this
Thank you to everyone who restored some faith in the human race for the rest of us.
By nurse at tulane
May 28, 2006 06:02 PM | Link to this
I want to thank you for this wonderful depiction of our ordeal.I was one of the nurses at tulane during this experience and helped care for the charity patients while they were in our parking garage.Also in response to HCA, I have never been more proud and thankful of the place I work than I was after this experience.Everyone from the highest ranking down helped each other through this time.Thank you again
By Sherry
May 28, 2006 11:13 PM | Link to this
Jane, thank you for telling our story. Telling what happen wasn’t easy, I have never been one to open up and share what I feel. Yet, while interviewing me , you showed you cared and made it easy to share what happen. For some, we are stilling living what happen. There were heroes that touched me more than any damage Katrina could ever do. Your writing has reconized those heroes, and for that I am thankful. Our story should be told not only for the horror , but also for the good. In those days, I saw more human caring and sharing than I ever thought possible. Many risked their own lifes to save my son, Hunter, and they will always have a special place in my heart. Hunter and I were lucky, we survived a disaster because we were surrounded by heroes. Again, thank you Jane , you will always have a special place in my heart. Sherry Hebert
By JMD
May 29, 2006 08:16 AM | Link to this
Jane, First let me say that you and The AJC are to commended. Your series gives me hope that there are still some true journalists out there who understand their job is to do the work and get me - the consumer - just the facts. I really do think most of us are smart enough to develop - from the facts - our own opinion. We do not need journalists or the “talking heads” to do it for us. Bravo for the hard work and solid, honest reporting!
Second, with all of the very bad press that corporate America has gotten (and deserved)with the HEALTHSOUTH, WorldCom and Enron disasters, HCA has also given me hope that there really is more in our corporate board rooms then just greed. I am so impressed with the leadership skills that HCA showed throughout Katrina and the help they showed Charity. Take me to a HCA hospital any day!
To me, the biggest lesson learned throughout Katrina is this….if you are relying on the government to be your life line, you better wake up and realize that you are holding onto very little. We should all be more like Jack Bovender….really take charge of our own situations no matter how overwhelming they are!
I am not sure of the awards that are given out in the journalism world, but you deserve a giant one! Kudos for a job very well done.
PS. One piece of advice - you need to make this into a book….I promise it would sell millions! Thanks again Jane for getting this story to us…as someone already said, ‘it needed to be told’.
By CG
May 29, 2006 09:21 AM | Link to this
As a Canadian and a nurse I would like to thank the author for an excellent series. You have brought to life a situation that we in the north would have never been able to understand. I am awed by the skill, dedication and humanity of those involved and wish all of you well in the recovery of the health care system in New Orleans.
By Adovcate4Children
May 29, 2006 10:01 AM | Link to this
THANK YOU Jane for a job well done ~ This series has opened my eyes to the horror and devastation experienced by residents of New Orleans. And to think, while you’ve shared the stories of those within Charity and Tulane in the wake of Katrina, there was an entire city affected by this terrible storm. Those of us who did not see the remnants, first hand, have had our eyes opened through the truly heroic accounts of those within “the system”. I look forward to sharing this series with my students so that they understand what selfLESSness is truly about!
By Quills
May 30, 2006 03:01 AM | Link to this
Thank you for writing this. TheNIGHTCRAWLER (This Memorial Day, I spend here.)
By Patricia
May 30, 2006 03:20 AM | Link to this
You did such a wonderful thing! Thank you for writing this!
By jr
May 30, 2006 08:24 AM | Link to this
Great reporting, great story, great lessons to be learned. Everyone can learn from this saga. Those that are willing to serve others, take full responsibility for their duties and actions, and are willing to go above and beyond what is required, are the true heroes in life. When we stop idolizing sports, movie, political, and TV personalities and recognize and model our lives after the heroes mentioned in this article, the world will be a much better place to live. Thank God for people like the ones noted at HCA. There really are great people in Coporate America.
By Michelle
May 30, 2006 08:46 AM | Link to this
This has been an excellent story and a real eye-opener. I thank you for writing this, a job well done!
By Gene
May 30, 2006 11:36 AM | Link to this
Jane, Thanks for writing this story even though it has brought me to tears on more than one occassion. The stories of the heroes involved - the doctors, nurses, janitors, and other staff who not only rode the storm out with their patients but who then did everything in their power to get them out alive is one that has needed to be told for some time now. It was an honor to be allowed to share a rooftop with them.
By PMK
May 30, 2006 06:44 PM | Link to this
As an HCA employee I have reserved comment until the final chapter of this story has been told. First, what a phenomal job Jane O. Hansen has done with this story from the inside. In the first chapter she made mention of Charity being the hospital that cares for the have-nots and referred to HCA as the big boy Private Pay on the block. Let it be known that HCA through out the country takes on many “charity” cases as well. No one is refused healthcare. The sad part of this is in our facilities we go through many disaster scenario drills of all types ever year, some are realistic, some are table top drills that will go on for on a week or more. I understand that this disaster was unlike anything we had previously seen, but our staff is trained and prepared, as proved through hurrincanes such as Charlie in Florida. We here in Georgia work very closely with GEMA, and the county emergency management in order to be prepared for this type of thing, though the magnitude of Katrina was unimaginable to all. For what Charity had to face I am truly sorry, even sorrier that you are left with Ray Nagin to trust for help. Ms. Carolyn Lewis, God Bless Her and her son, hit it on the head when she commented that the federal government did not show, the state government did not show, and the city government did not show. Perhaps those entities will learn how to jump into action the next time rather than letting corporate America (HCA)handle things. It’s a shameful thing for America to say they cannot depend on their government, but I urge you all, don’t rely on them in a true emergency. Prepare yourselves and your family. You can see by the condition of the Ninth Ward and other areas that if we wait on FEMA we’ll die first. Kudos to HCA for their swift response. It was just what we had always been trained to do. It was just the right thing to do, for HCA and for Charity as well. Thanks, Ms. Hansen, for your wonderful article that let those who were not involved know the real story.
By Jan Houston
May 30, 2006 08:26 PM | Link to this
I read every one, and it was the story we all needed, but could not have then, when we were watching in disbelief in our dry safe homes…………………..God Bless them all!!! and you for writing it Jane!!!
By
May 31, 2006 08:36 AM | Link to this
First…I must say I am VERY proud to be employed by HCA. 2ndly: I would like to commend all involved in setting the records straight with regard to this horrendous event. I believe Mayor Nagin did what he could do considering he was also trapped at a lower level of government under red tape. Yes, the government as a whole should have done more. But just like some of the doctors at Charity, he was “stuck”. I saw and felt his frustrations for five days—at least. But judgments never got us anywhere and in the meantime we could be helping NO, LA. But that is one woman’s opinion — in Atlanta. Last but certainly not least: To put a slightly different spin on things; living in Atlanta, where we were only affected by slightly high winds and a little rain (in comparison), after the Katrina devastation, I find myself compelled by some of the comments posted to take my son who is 17 to New Orleans to view the “devastation—turn hope”, that is tangible even through the words of this documentary. Our children are spoiled and an event like this happens for many reasons. Personally, I see it as an opportunity to open my son’s eyes to the need to understand real world issues. Issues that point out a defective government but systematically causing a selflessness and humanity that cannot be denied. I want to open his eyes to the fact that although I provide for him, NOTHING is promised in life because LIFE is not a guarantee. I want him to understand and appreciate his blessings so that NOTHING in life is taken for granted. Not a cup of water—not a breath of air. Time and time again the American People have come together to help one another out. Unfortunately, often times it is in the wake of a disaster….but we DO come together. I feel taking my son to NO, LA will help in more ways than one. It will also help to boost the economy there. When we visit, we have to eat. It’s a start. Let’s all go to NO, LA. Let’s help revitalize that city.
After all, it is Home to many of our fellow American People.
By RAN
June 1, 2006 04:08 PM | Link to this
I love the feeling that I developed while reading each segment. Normally this feeling comes when hearing the Star Spangled Banner played at the Olympics or when one of my children achieve a goal that they have worked hard to reach. I can’t think of a time personally that this feeling has been brought about by the actions of a previous employer. I am so proud to work for HCA! Thank you for exemplifying the character and integrity that is so sorely lacking in Corporate America today!
By J
June 1, 2006 04:31 PM | Link to this
Thank you for giving us insight on the human spirit. In the aftermath of disaster it is not about the haves and have nots. It is about people helping themselves and helping those who cannot help themselves. I have lived in Florida all my life and had not experienced a hurricane until 2004. The fear during the storm as parts of your roof tear off is not near as frightening as the fear of lawlessness after the storm. No power, no water, no fuel for days or even weeks. The dark is absolute and the silence is deafening. The heat is unbearable and fights break out over food and water. Homes are broken into and stores are looted. Anyone caught on the streets after curfew is arrested and detained until morning.
It is amazing to hear how the infrastructure of the hospitals remained intact as the infrastructure of the city fell apart. Hospital employees are trained on what to do in the event of a disaster and it is reassuring to know that training is effective. I am proud to be an employee of HCA. During the week after Katrina we were kept posted on the evacuation process. I cried when I read the e-mail informing us about the staff feeding themselves with IVs. There was a huge sigh of relief when the last person was evacuated. HCA not only rescued their patients and employees in the aftermath of disaster but also provided for them in the months to come. They were assisted with relocation and disaster funds were set up so fellow HCA employees could donate. Employees volunteered to go work in the makeshift hospitals that were set up. Employees in Florida were especially eager to help to repay the assistance we received in 2004.
As you outlined with your story, it is compassion and determination and not politics that prevail.
By SHARON
June 2, 2006 11:56 PM | Link to this
I wish this story were longer. I have read every word with wonder and pride in my fellow nurses and doctors. I, too, am an employee of HCA in Kentucky and would certainly buy this story if published into a book. Maybe that bears thinking about!
By Toni
June 4, 2006 05:05 PM | Link to this
Thank you for writing this story. My family has lived in New Orleans for 6 generations. Katrina’s desruction was so vast you must see it to believe it.Charity Hospital was a necessary and important resource for New Orleans. Thank you again for not forgetting New Orleans, she nedds all the help she can get as do her citizens.
By Rhonda Williams
June 7, 2006 11:49 PM | Link to this
As I have read these pages, my heart goes back to my home, Louisiana. I’m headed back to Louisiana on Sunday June 11,2006. I’m a registered Nurse and my very first job was at University Hospital/Charity Hospital (MCLNO). I sit here with Tears in my eyes as I can only imagine what the Nurses were going through. I can’t begin to express my frustration as a United States Citizen when I see the pictures and hear the stories. This story had to be told, and I thank you Jane, you did an excellent job letting Americans see the inside of Katrina’s distruction. Continue to write truths and stories that will help shape us as a nation. We Need not EVER LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN. Rhonda Williams,RN,MSN
By Bethany
June 9, 2006 02:58 PM | Link to this
After reading this compelling series, I have been brought to tears more than once, mainly from the reminder of what my co-workers had to endure during Katrina, but also from pride that I work for HCA.
Here in the Nashville corporate office, as our CEOs scrambled helicopters and evacuated patients, we struggled to locate every employee who had been displaced by the storm. As these employees called to check in and tell us they were safe, I was brought to tears daily hearing their stories. They were spread out all over the country, living with friends, trying to find temporary work, their homes destroyed while they saved patients at the hospitals. HCA did everything they could to find temporary work for and pay all their employees affected by the disaster, and I am proud to have been involved in the location of all 2600 displayed employees. I am even more proud that I can call these heros at Tulane and our other 3 affected facilities, colleagues.
Thank you, Jane, for writing this story. You have put words to so many feelings that I have been unable to express until reading this.