American Farm Bureau Federation is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, a city that had to pick itself up by its bootstraps following the devastating hurricane Katrina. Both Tom Steever and Pete Shinn are in The Big Easy covering the AFBF Convention for Brownfield Ag News. Tom offered some insight into the mood of the city, post-Katrina:
"The shock of Hurricane Katrina has lingered in The Big Easy since those drenching, violent days in August 2005. Some of what the area lost will never return, but what its citizens are able to get back, they’re getting back.
Businesses in New Orleans’ famous French Quarter reopened as soon as they could after the hurricane and resulting floods, letting the world know they hadn’t gone away forever. A large number of conventions by-passed New Orleans while it recovered from the storm, such as the American Farm Bureau, which put off for a year holding its annual meeting in this historic city on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.
The ordeal has had a profound effect on people like Leo Christakis (pictured) who opened Menna’s Restaurant 37 years ago. His resolve was tested when fire forced him to change location five years ago. Then his place was shuttered for one and a half months after the Katrina floods."
Saturday morning Menna’s was a busy, noisy eatery in its 1850s building as if it had never seen an interruption in serving its customers. Christakis, observing from behind a newspaper during a break at the counter, doesn’t know if he could stand another bout with weather like Katrina again. But as he told Brownfield in an interview about his and his business’ recovery, he is determined, and his feelings for the people of New Orleans are stronger now than they were before the levy gave way.
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