Who We Are
Who We Are
Who We Are
Two friends:  Rosemary and Lydia
St. Ann's Apartments
Lydia Edwards

Lydia stayed at St. Ann's for the storm because she was afraid of the conditions at the Superdome.  "I trusted in the Lord that I'd be safe," she said.  During the storm, the residents who had stayed behind huddled together in a hallway praying for their safety as the winds raged outside.  The next day, as the water began rising in the streets and then into the building itself, Lydia offered to share her 2nd floor room with 2 friends.  To help them feel at home, she slept on the floor and gave them her bed and couch: "I like my friends…we're a group of people like a family here.  We check on one another."  Days later, rescue workers helped Lydia and the others climb through a window and into a basket, where they were pulled up to a helicopter on the roof ("they were so nice").  She was taken to a gymnasium in St. Antonio where she stayed for 3 weeks before moving to Lake Charles to be with her nephew.  Only 4 days later, she was forced to evacuate yet again, this time from Hurricane Rita!  Intially taken to a shelter in Shreveport, she then moved in with her 2 sisters in Arkansas, where she slept on an air mattress for 4 months before finally getting a room of her own.

Needless to say, after all Lydia had endured, she is extremely happy to be back at St. Ann's: "I felt like I was at home; it looked just like it did when I first moved here.  I love it!"  Her favorite thing about living at St. Ann's is being among friends and living so close to her church, St. Peter Claver.
Rosemary Alexander

Rosemary moved into St. Ann's just a few months before Katrina's landfall.  A widower with few evacuation options, she decided to ride out the storm at home with her new friends.  When the storm's floodwaters inundated her first-floor apartment, she was forced to abandon all of her things and take refuge with Lydia, her friend and neighbor on the 2nd floor.   Lydia, Rosemary, and another senior anxiously awaited rescue: "I was a nervous wreck, but I knew someone would come."  Without any power, they used flashlights to see one another, telling stories to pass the time.  One evening after preparing for bed, they were startled by a knocking and shouting.  A Coast Guard rescue team had arrived. There was only one way out of the building: basket lift!  "I was afraid I would fall into the waters… but they were so careful with me."   Rosemary, who had heart surgery just before the storm, was evacuated directly to a hospital in San Antonio, Texas.  After her release, she stayed with family members in Illinois and then Mississippi before finally returning to Louisiana.

In September 2007, she found her own apartment in New Orleans, but chose to move again when St. Ann reopened in November 2007.  "I wanted to come back to my community, my church.  I truly feel the presence of God in this place."
Ella Perry

Ella is an original resident of St. Ann's, having moved in when it opened in 2000.  She evacuated to Fort Worth just before the storm, where she shared a bedroom with her daughter for 5 months before moving to Evergreen, a nearby senior community.  She was among the first residents to return, moving back home in November of 2007.  Ella has 3 other children (2 more daughters and a son) living in California.  She jokes that her son, who works on the CBS television show Numbers, "thinks he's a moviestar." 

While she was away, Ella says she stayed in close contact with her friends from St. Ann's: "I had the biggest phone bill… I called everybody!"  She enjoys attending weekly prayer services in the first-floor Chapel every Friday, and she is an avid crossword puzzle enthusiast: "I do my crosswords every day." Ella says "the location and the people" are her two favorite things about living at St. Ann's.
Sarah Thompson

Sarah is a retired cook who lived in New Orleans East before the storm.  She had just lost her husband of 31 years only 2 months before Katrina hit.  She rode out the storm in her home on Reed Blvd, which flooded badly ("the water was 4 steps from the 3rd floor").  She stayed there for 3 days before rescuers came "in swamp boats" to take her and her family to the Convention Center, where she waited in the heat for another 3 days.  Finally, she was flown by helicopter to a gym in Corpus Christi.  After a month of sleeping on a cot in the gym ("the people were so nice there"), she found an apartment nearby.  "God brought me through it all… I don't know where I'd be without Him."

Sarah is so happy to be back in New Orleans and "loves" her new apartment at St. Ann's with its 2 oversized windows and high ceilings: "my apartment is so beautiful… there is so much light!"  She laughed as she spoke about her pastor coming to visit her soon after she moved in.  "He thought it was so nice; he wanted to sell his place and move in with me!"