ShareThisBy DON WADE
After Hurricane Katrina had hit, after the levees had broken, after days of separation from family and the angst of not knowing, after watching the TV news over and over until he finally caught sight of his family boarding a bus ...
Then, and only then, did Kendrick Lewis think of what was supposed to come next: his special senior season at O. Perry Walker High School in New Orleans.
Soon enough, that dream, like much of the city, washed away.
"I thought, 'that's the end of football,'" he says.
A year later, Lewis is a freshman wide receiver for Ole Miss and will be in uniform for Sunday's opener here vs. Memphis.
"It don't seem like a year," Lewis says, shaking his head. "It seems like three months ago."
For those such as Lewis, who already was in Houston when Katrina came ashore, there is still tremendous gratitude for having survived _ "I was just happy to be alive; I could have been one of those who was left."
Yet there's been no chance to re-calibrate life, either. Those violent winds of change have even played havoc with the concept of time, in part because the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina brought its own storm surge: so much to do, and sometimes not enough help to do it.
"Gas shortages for a long time, not much food the first couple of weeks," says running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis, whose family lives in the hard-hit eastern part of the city. "But every time I go back, it gets a little better."
Running backs coach Frank Wilson, who's in his second year at Ole Miss and used to be the head coach at O. Perry Walker High, had a lot of family in New Orleans, too. They all survived, but the home in which Wilson was raised did not. Nor did the house he had most recently been living in. In fact, he had sold that house about a month before the storm.
"We've been blessed," Wilson says, taking stock. "Even with Katrina, and even though I lost some material things, I did not lose any relatives.
"People have moved on, but the biggest tragedy is the separation of families. That's what the hurricane did. It separated families. Almost like the Great Depression, people migrating and moving apart from one another."
It's what Lewis had to do, playing his senior season at Gainesville High in Georgia. He says he was "accepted and they treated me well." Still, it wasn't home.
So, when Lewis heard his high school in New Orleans was open, he moved back for the spring semester and graduated with his friends.
"I loved every part of it," he says.
A year earlier, Rebels receiver Mike Wallace had graduated from O. Perry Walker. His family's house was heavily damaged by the storm, but he says, "Our home is almost finished being rebuilt. We're about to move back in."
For Wallace, however, the greater tragedy came long after Katrina. Several weeks ago, his older brother was shot and killed in New Orleans _ a city where the streets take no prisoners under the best of conditions.
"He used to be at all my games in high school," says Wallace. "This year, he was gonna come up here."
All the players from the New Orleans area, a group that also includes defensive lineman Hayward Howard, are expected to have many family members and friends at Sunday's game.
As of Monday, Tropical Storm Ernesto was trained on Florida and predicted to strengthen back into a hurricane. The projected path has it traveling nowhere near New Orleans.
But as Ernesto first broke into the news several days ago, Green-Ellis decided he would see for himself.
"I've been watching a web site with the National Hurricane Center in Miami," he says. "It got downgraded to a tropical storm, so that was good."
It was reassuring.
Well, somewhat reassuring.
"My in-laws and my mother, they're still in New Orleans," says Wilson, the running backs coach. "We'll get them up here this weekend, and with that storm brewing, it'll be good to know they're in a safe environment.
"From this point on, you can never take another one for granted."
