The same day I returned from a congressional delegation visit to Holland  with US Senator Mary Landrieu, I found an unsigned 3-page single spaced letter in my mailbox.  She wrote:

“I lived in Lakeview when the levees broke after Katrina. I can’t begin to tell you what five + feet of water in my home did to me and my family. My losses were tremendous and not just in a financial way….I would have no one to blame if I were on the Gulf Coast. I think I would have made peace with my losses by now, if I could blame it on Mother Nature.”

Before the flood, the writer lived a normal life and also provided a home for her mother who had Alzheimers.  But the flood had wiped her out financially and socially and had harmed her relationship with her family. She described a 7-hour drive, one way everytime she went to see her mother who she was forced to relocate to Texas.  Her mom died last year, and the writer is certain it’s due to the the trauma of relocation.  The writer closed with this:

“Thank you for fighting for all of us over the last three and a half years. Most people have full-time jobs and there are so many other things going on in their lives, like having kids or aging parents and recovering from the flood every weekend for years. There’s no time left to fight the Corps of Engineers and/or the politicians, although I’m sure it’s of tremendous importance to most of us. Thank God someone is doing this! I am grateful for your persistence in this everlasting and meaningful cause. Gratefully yours, a former Lakeview resident”

To you, the unknown Lakeview survivor: I will not give up.

It was a coincidence as she penned her letter, I had noticed a Lakeview neighborhood home that looked like it flooded 3 months ago, not 3 years ago. I photographed it and loaded it here. It doesn’t belong to the writer.  But to me, it represents her home and her pain.