| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, October 03 2005 |
| |
| Daniel Millan lives a double life. He is maitre d' extraordinaire by day, maintenance worker by night. He is a native of Mexico, but he loves his adopted hometown of New Orleans. He is a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, but deep down inside, his emotional wounds make him a victim of the deadly storm.
I first met Daniel at the world-famous Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans' French Quarter, where my husband and I went for breakfast to celebrate our wedding anniversary. With a bright smile and a friendly voice, decked out in his tuxedo, Daniel said, "Welcome to Brennan's." It was a memorable morning of champagne, turtle soup, eggs hussarde, bananas foster and warm hospitality, the kind you never forget.
The next time I saw him was on a Spanish-language television program about Hurricane Katrina. Frail, confused and in tears, he recounted the ordeal he went through after Katrina destroyed his New Orleans home. He slept on the roof for two nights. All he ate during that time was an apple and three dried prunes. When he finally decided to leave and find help, what he saw left an indelible mark in his mind.
It was about six blocks to the nearest highway, and the water was still up to his knees. "After one block, I saw the first body," he told me on the phone after I tracked him down. "It was that of a man." Two more blocks and he saw another body. He choked up as he described how the man was reaching out for the door with one hand and holding a baby with the other. "The baby was nude except for a diaper swelled up by the water."
When Daniel reached the highway, he flagged down a police car and asked for help to retrieve the dead, but he was told that there was no time for the dead -- there were lives to be saved. He found shelter in a local grammar school, where he was given half a sandwich and a bit of water. But with children crying, people fighting and filth piling up, the place was more than he could handle.
That's when Daniel decided that he had to find a way to get to Houston. That is where his wife and kids went when residents of New Orleans were ordered to evacuate; he'd stayed behind to work. Walking alone on a bridge, he saw another heartbreaking scene that stuck in his mind: A police officer was trying to convince an older woman sitting on the ground to leave, but she sat there next to her husband, trying to wake him up. He was dead, but she refused to accept it.
With nowhere to turn and no means of getting out of town, Daniel noticed several cars left stranded on the bridge. One had the keys inside but no gas. It was his ticket out of the hellhole that his beloved New Orleans had become.
When Daniel finally made it to Houston, he immediately went over to a group of police officers and told them that he had stolen a car. He knew there would be consequences, and was willing to face them. The police officers told him not to worry; they would make sure the owner of the car got it back.
Daniel is now one of the thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans. When I last spoke to him, he was living with his wife and two sons in a Houston hotel, and was looking for a job in the restaurant and hotel industry. The house that he purchased just 10 months before Katrina by working two jobs in New Orleans is gone, and all his material possessions disappeared in the storm. He has lost a lot, but he has not lost it all. One thing he says he will never lose is his love for New Orleans.
When I asked him if he plans to return to the "Crescent City," he did not hesitate: "I love New Orleans, its people, my job and my customers. That is my life." Daniel is an optimist, and so are the owners of Brennan's. They hope to reopen the famous eatery as early as December. When that happens, Daniel promises to be there, delivering his cheerful "Welcome to Brennan's."
*** |
