“If we had stayed, we would have perished,” says Bobby Trufant with the resolution of someone who has watched his life diverge in an instant. Bobby and his wife Tinnesha made the decision to evacuate from New Orleans, Louisiana at three in the morning on the night of Hurricane Katrina. They left the following morning with only the clothes on their backs and a few personal items. Tinnesha was six and a half months pregnant at the time. “With her being pregnant and that water coming in so fast, there’s no way we would’ve gotten out,” he says.

“I remember wanting to clean the house,” Tinnesha adds jokingly. She expected to be back in a day or so and wanted to return to an orderly home. This evacuation however quickly proved to be extraordinary in scale. “It took us thirteen hours to get a hundred and fifty miles,” Bobby recounts. Suffering through heat and lack of food Tinnesha tried to push the needs of her pregnancy out of her mind. “You do what you have to do, when you have to do it,” she explains. They drove as far as they could without stopping.

Eventually, the couple pulled into a Days Inn. The desk clerk apologetically told them that there were no vacancies. “No room at the Inn,” Bobby jokes, referring to the irony of their situation, something that later led to their moniker as the “Joseph and Mary of the Shelter” of Katrina. Unable to help them in any other way, the desk clerk gave them directions to the St. Thomas More shelter. Initially the two weren’t keen on the idea of a shelter, but Bobby and Tinnesha took their only option. The next morning, the Trufants and the other evacuees watched, on shelter cots, as the news station showed footage of the devastation caused by the rising water in New Orleans. Hundreds of miles from their home and the lives they had known, they became more and more uneasy as the hours went on. “It hit us and everyone else in the shelter,” Bobby says, pausing to feel the scope of the memory again. “There was no home to go back to… we were just numb.”

OCTOBER: Going back to see the damage after months.

It was a while before the government would allow the Trufants to return to their homes. They had to ensure the safety of the area first and then slowly, they allowed families to return and assess the damage. “When we got in – what we found wasn’t good.” At the highest point of the storm the water had risen to 13 feet inside the Trufant home. The walls were black with mold. “To hear about it on television is one thing,” says Bobby. “But to see it …” he trails off. They did recover some photographs and jewelry but everything else, says Tinnesha, “was just gone.”

WHAT CAME NEXT:

“After returning to New Orleans and realizing that we didn’t have a home anymore, all we could do was go back to what we knew,” says Bobby. “A wonderful family took us in and let us live in what the Cajuns call an ‘outdoor kitchen’.” The couple lived in the outdoor kitchen until they were able to find more accommodating living quarters in an apartment. It was an eight month span that also involved the birth of their beautiful baby daughter, Anya. Moving into an apartment was one step on their way to being settled. Pieces were coming together but never all at once, and never to completion. Once they did move into the new place they had trouble furnishing it. Things they had never thought of became major problems. All of their finances had been frozen when the local banks closed down. So they were unable to access their bank account. A social service worker they had met advised the Trufants to contact the St. Landry - Evangeline United Way in Opelousas, LA. “I have just the person for you to speak with at United Way,” she had said.

United Way staff interviewed the couple, visited their new property, and began to make arrangements to address their needs. Using funds from the organization’s Hurricane Response and Recovery Fund, they outfitted the Trufants with the supplies they needed to furnish their home and take care of their new baby girl, Anya. Bobby was struck by the warm reception that he and his wife received. He admits now that he expected an exhausted agency staff and used appliances. “When we got the appliances home and started to unpack them. I just couldn’t believe what we had gotten.” Among other things, the couple unloaded a brand new Kenmore side by side refrigerator, pots and pans, and diapers for Anya. Smiling in tamed amazement, Tinnesha says, “It’s funny, something as seemingly trivial as a refrigerator can be a luxury, we’re coming to find out.” The appliance brought a sense of normalcy and realization to their lives that had been missing for months. “Thanks to the United Way, I have hope,” says Bobby. “In five or ten years, I’ll rebuild, take care of my family, and move on. Hurricane Katrina was a spirit-breaker, but United Way was a spirit -maker. And we appreciate everything they did for us.”

Turning to look at Tinnesha and Anya at his side, Bobby leaves one final message for those who contributed to the United Way Hurricane Relief and Recovery Fund, “From the bottom of my big heart, my wife’s medium heart, and our daughter’s little tiny heart,” he says. “We thank you. God bless you, and please continue to contribute.”