Stranded inside a dormitory at Xavier University of Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina bearing down on him, sophomore Marvell Brickhouse phoned relatives and friends in Chicago to say goodbye.
“A lot of people were telling me not to say it,” the 20-year-old Chicagoan recalled Thursday morning. “But I said, `It’s reality, you’ve got to face reality. And there’s a chance I might not make it.'”
After being trapped with 19 other people inside the dorm for four days and then embarking on a frightening odyssey that brought him home to Chicago a week after the storm, Brickhouse did make it.
Now enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Brickhouse said he has no desire to return to New Orleans for school. But he was more than happy to share his story with researchers Matthew Cardinale and Shannell Jefferson.
Brickhouse knew they would understand. Cardinale and Jefferson are evacuees, too.
Cardinale, 24, and Jefferson, 21, of New Orleans, are spending this week in Chicago interviewing Katrina evacuees ages 14 to 24 for a project they are hoping to turn into a book.
“That’s what’s really unique about this project,” Cardinale said about the Hurricane Katrina Evacuee Youth-Led Research Project. “We’ve got evacuees interviewing evacuees.”
They are asking interested evacuees in that age group to visit the Heartland Alliance office on the 18th floor of 208 S. LaSalle St. between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday. Subjects, who are paid $15, are asked about their experiences and their opinions on the government’s response to the storm.
Cardinale and Jefferson are former residents of Covenant House New Orleans, a homeless shelter for youths.
When Katrina hit in August, Cardinale, a graduate student at the University of New Orleans, was volunteering as a mentor at the shelter. With a $10,000 donation from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, he had organized a project for a three-person team of ex-shelter residents, including Jefferson, to research how New Orleans police treated homeless youths.
When Katrina devastated the city, however, the team’s plans changed. They decided to instead use the money–plus an additional $7,145 from the same group–to interview young evacuees in Chicago, Houston and New Orleans about their hurricane experiences.
“I think the young people in this whole thing have been overlooked,” Cardinale said. “And with this project, this is the first time that a lot of them have had a chance to share their stories. We’re giving a voice to so many youths out there, and we’re documenting it all.”
When the report is completed this spring, the team hopes to find a publisher and develop the evacuees’ stories into a book.
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dwischnowsky@tribune.com
