Old friends, strangers assist family

November 10, 2005

Section: News

Page: 1B

Khurram Saeed, Staff of THE JOURNAL NEWS

CHESTNUT RIDGE – Valerie Plauche always understood the enormity of her family’s loss from Hurricane Katrina, but it was only recently that she began to feel it.

It’s been 75 days since Plauche, a 10th-generation New Orleanian, her husband, Daniel Baruch, and their 3-year-old daughter, Lelia, fled their Lakeview neighborhood for points north, including Rockland.

For the past three weeks, the family stayed at the Jerrahi mosque’s guesthouse in Chestnut Ridge. Two days ago, they moved into a Tenafly, N.J., home provided to them rent-free for six months by Jewish families and organizations in New Jersey.

“It’s hard to be depressed when there’s so much kindness,” Plauche said. “We’ve lost everything and we’ve gained so much.”

The family has been given love, support, gift cards and clothes. During the recent holy month of Ramadan, they joined the Muslims for dinner on many nights when they broke their daily fast.

The Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge has given Lelia a free year of school, and families from synagogues in Bergen County, N.J., have pledged furniture for each of the bedrooms in their new home.But having a roof over one’s head doesn’t take the place of home. Feelings of comfort and familiarity are not easily replaced.

Plauche, 42, has talked with friends from New Orleans who are also living elsewhere and feeling the same way as the weariness of being away from home finally sets in. They miss their privacy, that place where they would rejuvenate themselves at day’s end.

For Plauche, Baruch and Lelia, that meant preparing meals in the kitchen of their rented frame cottage home, shopping at small markets in their neighborhood, biking along scenic Lakeshore Drive, and relaxing in the shade of their home’s 300-year-old oak trees.

“There is no normal anymore,” said Baruch, 38, a musician who is trying to find a job in the area as a composer and audio engineer.

The company he worked for let him go two weeks after the storm.

Baruch worked on this year’s Oscar-winning documentary “Born Into Brothels” with his musical partner, John McDowell, a Pomona resident. It was one reason why the family, which is Jewish, ended up at the mosque.

“I brought it to the sheik’s attention,” said McDowell, who describes himself as an “unofficial member” of the mosque. “Here’s an example where there’s humanity, a living example of a peaceful and humanitarian measure.”The couple moved into the mosque’s guesthouse Oct. 16 after spending several weeks shuttling between the homes of friends in the tri-state area.

Like many residents living on the Gulf Coast, they never expected not to be able to return home.Baruch flew back to New Orleans on Aug. 27 from Washington, on the last flight into the Crescent City. The plane was empty, except for a few Red Cross workers and reporters, he said.

They evacuated the day before the storm. They packed a box of food for their drive north to Jackson, Miss, taking with them three days’ worth of shorts and T-shirts, two yoga mats, three computer hard drives, their camera and videocamera, and notes for an arts project Plauche is working on.

They had voluntarily evacuated the city the year before for Hurricane Ivan, which had turned out not to be as bad as predicted.

They thought they’d be back.

From Mississippi, they went to stay with Plauche’s great aunt in Cold Spring, Texas. They then decided to make their way north.

They had hardly any savings in the bank to speak of, Baruch said.

Along the way, strangers paid for their gas when they saw their Louisiana plates and bought them meals when they heard their stories, Baruch said. A mechanic didn’t take money for an oil change.

“To be in the moment, it’s very easy to spiral down,” Baruch said recently, wearing a sweater given to him by the mosque’s spiritual leader. “Every time we were a little bit off, depressed, upset, Lelia would start crying. ... She would be OK as long as we were OK.”

So the couple tried to focus on the positive, finding strength in the kindness of strangers.

Baruch went back to New Orleans in September. Mud was everywhere, there was nothing left to salvage in their home and the air was thick with the smell of sewage, dead animals and mold.

They lost many things – they did not have flood insurance – but among the most painful material losses were an antique Persian rug given to Plauche’s parents on their wedding day, childhood photo albums and handmade toys.Plauche said someday she might like to return, but right now it’s too early to tell their future.

Baruch, meanwhile, is looking to set up a studio so he can go back to work. That would cost, he said, at least $10,000 to $15,000.

New data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the more than 500,000 evacuees who have yet to return to the Gulf Coast are struggling to find work. They are facing unemployment rates that exceed 33 percent, with minorities hit the hardest.

“And not only are they without jobs, but many of these people lost much of their property and possessions in the storm, and it is likely that few have significant savings on which to fall back,” Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute economist, wrote in a weekly online newsletter put out by EPI.

Although Plauche and Baruch have lost their former rhythm of life, they are slowly finding their own place in a new community.

Baruch joked that he talks to an imam and rabbi on a regular basis.“No judgment, no expectations, no obligations from both of them,” Baruch said. “Just pure love. This is what energizes us.”