When Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home, Conway native returned to her roots

A few days before Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, Johnnie Bridges celebrated a family reunion in Conway.

The gathering would prove symbolic: Nearly 36 years after leaving her hometown for Louisiana, Bridges returned to her roots for good.

“I’ve been here ever since,” the 72-year-old said, sitting in the living room of her small house on Ward Circle. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

Recently, Bridges has been watching TV specials about the 10-year anniversary of the storm that destroyed her Ninth Ward home.

The footage can be painful, but in some ways she feels relief. The story is as much a reminder of what she was spared as it is of what she lost. She punctuates most of her sentences with “thank God.”

“Seeing people out in that water … that’s one thing that I didn’t go through,” she said. “I just thank God. I thank God I wasn’t there for the tragic parts.”

The weekend before Katrina made landfall, Bridges was riding back from the reunion with her son. Somewhere near Atlanta, she started getting calls from her Louisiana friends.

“I was on my way back there,” she said. “They told me, ‘Don’t come this way. Turn around.’”

Her son asked if she wanted to stay with friends in Mississippi until the storm passed.

“If it hits New Orleans, it’s definitely going to hit Mississippi,” she told him. “So I’m not going there.”

The two turned around and returned to Conway.

River town roots

The second of six children, Bridges was raised by a single mother in South Conway.

Her mother worked housekeeping jobs for years, including as a maid at Dunes Village in Myrtle Beach.

Bridges had no intention of leaving town until she met a young man from Mississippi who had just gotten out of the Marine Corps. The couple married and moved to New Orleans in 1970.

For Bridges, New Orleans was an acquired taste. She’d always been a small-town girl, the type of person who would speak to passersby, even if they were strangers.

“They’re not like it is here,” she said. “We are friendly here. When we walk up, we always speak. If I’d go out to the bus stop in the mornings to catch the bus to go to work, you walk up and there’s 10 or 15 people standing there. You say, ‘Good morning!’ nobody opens their mouth. Nobody speaks. And I just couldn’t understand.”

But over time, she made friends. She also grew attached to the funky city, with its jazz, parades, dancing and Bourbon Street.

“That Mardi Gras,” she said. “That took the cake then.”

Bridges learned to love gumbo and red beans and rice. She ate beignets with her coffee.

“It was home,” she said.

For a while, Bridges had a job as a cashier in a grocery store. Then she transferred to the meat department. Her husband was a security guard there.

She later worked in a child care facility.

Over the years, she settled down. She found a church that offered passionate Bible studies and Sunday school.

New Orleans is where she was baptized.

Despite her strong faith, in the back of her mind — in the back of many locals’ minds — was the idea that one day a massive hurricane could ruin the low-lying city.

“My pastor always said, ‘You know we’re living in a cup and a saucer,’” she said. “‘New Orleans is like a cup and saucer. And it’s going to get us one day. it’s going to get us. So you better hold fast.’”

‘It’s time to go’

After Katrina flooded the city, Bridges saw the news reports. She watched people begging for help from rooftops. She knew her home was gone.

“You can’t explain it,” she said. “When you know what you have and then all of a sudden it’s all gone, I don’t remember every questioning God. … I just don’t know. I just can’t explain it.”

For weeks after the storm, she walked around her family’s home crying. Bridges remembers her sister encouraging her not to lose faith.

“You say you know the Lord,” her sister told her. “You know the Lord going to take care of you. So why you crying so much? You’ve got to put that aside.”

About nine months after the storm, she finally returned to the dilapidated structure on South Coronet Court that had been her home.

New Orleans looked like a housing graveyard. Roofs caved in. Windows smashed, Doors broken.

“I was really scared down there,” she said. “There wasn’t a house, a building or nothing that hadn’t been hit.”

Her home was no exception.

“It was destroyed,” she said. “Walked in, sofa here. Chairs there. TV, telephones, everything just scattered all around. Stove, refrigerator laying in the floor. The water, I guess, caused everything to just overturn.”

She saved some clothes that had been stored upstairs. From her living room, she salvaged a mirror and two wall-mounted angels.

The trip confirmed what she’d suspected.

“I just didn’t want to be in New Orleans no more,” she said. “That just told me it’s time to go.”

For her daughter, Atelice, the decision was more difficult. She had grown up in New Orleans and at the time Katrina hit she and her two young sons were living with her mother.

“All I knew was New Orleans,” Atelice Bridges, 41, said. “I didn’t want to leave. It was a struggle for me because I knew my mom, she was ready to go. But not me. I wasn’t ready to go.”

Atelice Bridges now lives around the corner from her mother in Conway. She still thinks about New Orleans: the people, the culture, even the food, which she just can’t seem to replicate.

“I’m still not used to it,” she said. “I miss New Orleans. And I’m comparing it all the time.”

Unlike her mother, Atelice Bridges has avoided most of the recent Katrina coverage. Too many sad memories, she said.

But for Johnnie Bridges, looking back isn’t all bad. She remembers standing up in Friendship Missionary Baptist Church on the Sunday after the storm and telling her story. Following the service, people came to her home and hugged her. They prayed for her. They brought her hot meals and clean clothes. When she found a place to stay, they brought furniture and appliances.

“Everything in here really was given to me by somebody here in Conway,” she said, pointing to the contents of her living room. “We’ve got some good folks here.”

In October, Bridges will have rented this home for 10 years. She doesn’t deny there have been hardships, but she says she’s been blessed. She lost no friends in the storm. Her family and church pulled her back up. And the journey from the Ninth Ward to Ward Circle, it’s only solidified her faith.

“It’s been struggles up and down,” she said. “But I made it — by the help of the good Lord.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 7:20 PM with the headline "When Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home, Conway native returned to her roots."