It was late August 2005 in New Orleans ravaged after Hurricane Katrina. A pregnant Lakeita Williams, her partner, Travis Randolph, and their 9-month-old baby had spent the last two days stranded in the sweltering attic of her parents' home. The flooding receded enough to let them leave the house, but waist-high flood waters forced them to spend the third night outside, on a mattress they had found floating nearby. The young family were the only people on the block who elected to ride out the storm, believing the stark warnings were being exaggerated. But Hurricane Katrina surpassed all expectations. The family's home and thousands others were destroyed. Without food or diapers for the baby, they were all increasingly starving, dehydrated and scared. "We felt hopeless," Williams said. Until, as if she had called an Uber, a man appeared in a canoe. "I don't know where he came from. He was Caucasian. He looked elderly and frail," Williams recalled. "He said, 'Come on. Get in.'" He took them in his canoe along several blocks until they reached dry land, where they joined others and began an odyssey to Baton Rouge that would result in their survival. Two decades later, as much as Williams remembers the terrifying rage of Katrina, she and others also indelibly recall the numerous acts of humanity by strangers that pulled them to the other side of one of the worst American catastrophes. "I had never seen the man in the canoe before, but I can still see his face," said Williams, now 40 and back in New Orleans. "He basically saved our lives. We could see helicopters hovering, but no one ever came. But this man did. It's like he was sent for us. He didn't want anything other than to help us." She never learned his name or saw him again. "A lot was going on," Williams added, "but I can say that people were really there for each other." Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast,resulting in at least 1,800 deathsand $108 billion in damages. In the wake of the disaster, desperation led to looting andviolent crimes, especially in the Superdome, the city's multipurpose stadium and makeshift shelter. But in some of the most intense and dramatic moments following Aug. 28, 2005, it was altruism that rescued people who were stranded, hurt and, in some cases, facing death. "It was kind of remarkable that we were all going through so much, but people stopped to help each other," Williams said. "That part of Katrina is often left out. Whether they were big acts or just being encouraging, praying, hugging … it helped us get through." Wil Haygood, then a Washington Post reporter, drove into the storm as residents were fleeing. As he approached, Haygood said what he saw reminded him of his experience reporting on the aftermath of wars in Somalia or Liberia. He encountered a city underwater and towns in Mississippi equally devastated. Bodies floated down roads. People took refuge on rooftops. Snakes hung from trees and alligators waded in the murky, contaminated waters that filled the streets. But in his reporting, he also uncovered benevolent gestures that made a dramatic difference in people's lives. Now retired,Haygood recalls meeting Anya Maddox, 23, who had had a disjointed upbringing in New Orleans and was mostly estranged from her family. She had been laid off from her job at Whole Foods in July 2005 and was practically broke when Katrina hit. Without the resources to evacuate, Maddox maneuvered through the storm, sleeping on friends' couches and swimming, hitchhiking and walking her way out of the city, Haygood wrote. She ended up 45 miles northwest of New Orleans, in a Waffle House in Gonzales. There, Haywood wrote, she picked up a broom and started sweeping the floor. She did not work there but instinctively started to help out. "The staff looked at her strangely," Haygood said. "Then they hired her. They loved her work ethic." Out of the chaos, Maddox found a new life working there. An employee, Brenda Williams, told Haygood at the time, "She's awesome. We're lucky to have her. She wasn't even hired yet and she started busing tables." Salvation came in many forms in August and September that year. Roy Rodney, a lawyer and New Orleans native, remembers leaving behind his "dream home" with his wife and young son, just before the storm hit, to lead a caravan of cars that carried 12 people. The group, which included family members as well as law partners and staffers of his firm, escaped to the town of Lafayette, Louisiana. What should have been a two-hour drive took 12 hours. Rodney had reserved just one hotel room in Lafayette. All 12 showered in that room and then convened around the cars outside the motel. A friend in town offered up the home of his mother, who had recently passed. "The house was nice," Rodney said. With no appliances, electricity or hot water, it sheltered his group and two additional people who requested help. They eventually had the electricity turned on and purchased a small television to watch in horror the destruction of their city. Rodney said he was "so on edge" that he started smoking cigarettes. After about a week in the packed house, a woman approached him as he sat outside. "She had her hands on her hips," Rodney recalled. "I told her, 'Miss, I got to warn you. I'm in a bad mood.' She asked, 'How many people you have living in this one house?' I said, 'Too many.' She said, 'I think so, too. That's why my son — he lives next door to you — has decided to move in with me so that at least some of your people can move into his house.'" "I was blown away," Rodney said. "So, when I think about that time, it's complex, because not only did I experience the horrors of the moment, I didn't experience as much as many others. And so, there's a sense of feeling guilty about it because I wanted to help as well. But I was heartened by little acts of kindness and big acts of kindness I saw all along the way." Rodney and his family eventually relocated to Houston and he opened a firm there. But he kept the New Orleans office open, too. While Rodney was able to weather the storm with family members, Roxene Thompson Kastens could not get through to her beloved grandparents, both in their 80s, or their 101-year-old cousin. They went missing after being convinced at the last minute to abandon their home and retreat to the Superdome. For two days, "everything went black; no communications," said Kastens, a New Orleans native who lived then and still lives in the Washington, D.C., area. "I was panicked," she said. She had been working on her dissertation for a doctorate, put it aside and headed to Houston, where her grandparents were eventually found by her best friend at a convention center. Kastens recalls being in Houston and resting her head under her grandfather's arm as they watched the unthinkable devastation of their home town on TV. "He said, 'Baby, I don't think I'm ever going back home again,'" Kastens recalled. "His tears poured from his eyes onto my face." So much was lost, including the symbol of her grandfather's bravery during World War II. In 1944, Willie Wesley Thompson, a Navy seaman, saved two lives in the South Pacific. One was a sailor who went overboard and nearly drowned. The other was a sailor who had fallen between two ships while disembarking one and boarding another.Instead of being honored, he was dishonorably discharged when those he saved contended he had tried to drown them. A chance meeting with a young Black Naval officer decades later resulted in him researching Thompson's case. "He found two of the men he saved and they admitted that he had saved them," Kastens said. This ultimately led to Thompson's reinstatement into the Navy after 60 years. He was then honorably discharged,with countless salutations and medals for his heroism. All those medals, commendations and a folded American flag were lost in the hurricane. "He kept all that stuff under the couch so he could pull it out when people came over," Kastens recalled. But after Katrina, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of the Navy invited Thompson to the Pentagon. "They took him into a little room and gave him a box," Kastens said. "It had all the medals and honors that were lost in Katrina. It was an act of kindness that softened the devastation of Katrina. It meant everything to him — to all of us." Thompson died in 2007 at 89. His wife passed years later. Their cousin died four months after the hurricane at 102. "Katrina really took a toll on older people," Kastens said. As for Lakeita Williams, the pregnant woman who was saved by a canoe, the toll of Hurricane Katrina is lasting but it has not stopped her or her family. Her son, Tavis, is now 20 and her daughter, Treazure, whom she was carrying in 2005, is a sophomore thriving at Spelman College in Atlanta. Out of Williams' experience came a book,"Heaven Responds,"where she recounts how her prayers and the acts of others carried her and her family through. "When we got to dry land after the canoe, a young Black man took us as close as he could to the Superdome," Williams said. "Everyone wanted a ride, but I think because I was pregnant, he chose us. He wanted to protect my unborn child. "That's the kind of thing that you don't forget and you're grateful for," she said. "From there, we were able to get some help, get to a friend's house and clean up some and then get a bus to Baton Rouge. So, without the help of others, no telling how our story would have ended."
