Pete Stevenson

Abstract

Pete Stevenson was raised in the Upper Ninth Ward. He dropped out of school af ter the eighth grade to help support his single mother, Rosemary, to whom he dedicates this chapter. He worked as an auto mechanic for most of his life, with a ten-year detour in prison. On the eve of Katrina, home for Pete was an eight-block area that encompassed the Lafitte Housing Development, and extended to North Claiborne, a compact world easily navigated on bicycle.1 In the projects, he had many friends and lovers. The setting for this interview was Pete’s efficiency apartment in Cullman, Alabama, known nationwide for the trial of Tommy Lee Hines, a mentally challenged black man convicted of allegedly raping a white woman in 1978.2 At 8:00 a.m. on December 30, 2005, he opened the door to a stranger, the interviewer? He was both ill at ease and eager to share his troubled thoughts with someone. The interview was conducted in the combination kitchen and living room furnished by the church people of Cullman. A table for two resting on eighteen inches of linoleum was all that separated the kitchen from the tiny living room, with its faded brown carpet, worn couch, and old TV. He is one of the poorly educated individuals who left New Orleans before the storm only because of an enormous extended family network. Above all, his example shows how much courage it took to leave everything familiar at a moment’s notice with little cash, or in his more colorful expression, “on a wing and a prayer.” Pete also graphically illustrates the extent of the secondary trauma to the people of New Orleans caused by the mishandling of the Katrina rescue. In exiley the shortcomings of his earlier education complicated his life. He remembered neither the last names nor the addresses of most of his lovers and friends, none of whom had cell phones. Pete’s experiences demonstrate three competing tensions in the post-Katrina debate: First, he missed his community and his friends in Lafitte, who gave meaning to his life. Second, although he didn’t feel in any danger, he had grown weary of the omnipresent gunfire. And lastly, without his community in Lafitte, his disability check alone was not sufficient for him to find housing in New Orleans.