New Orleans Screeners Make D/FW Home

COPPELL -- It's too late, they say. The New Orleans that resides in the heart is gone. It has been replaced by the promise of something new.

And, for now, maybe forever, a different New Orleans does not feel like home.

"There's not much there for the average New Orleans person," says James Braxton, one of Haltom City's newest residents. "The places to get our kind of groceries are gone. There are no buses. It's not New Orleans."

"Our kind of groceries" includes pickled pig tips to eat with red beans and rice. And hot sausage -- patties, not links. And gumbo meats.

"Most of our partying was eating," says Kirk Penn, now of Carrollton.

Maybe the shrimp tastes the same. But if you can't separate the shrimp from the idea of your city in ruins, with your neighborhoods seemingly polluted beyond repair, and if you're thinking that it might be risky eating Gulf Coast shrimp for a while, and you're also thinking that the last time you had shrimp it was with a loved one who is now gone or missing, is that really the same shrimp? Can any amount of spice make it taste the same?

"The mold was ridiculous." That's how Tasha Morrison, a new Metroplex resident, describes going back to the flooded family home. "It was black inside. When you opened the doors, it was like steam hitting you in the face. It's unbelievable what water can do."

Braxton says the loss is beyond monetary. His wish is to have a couple of family photos back.

Just a couple.

Braxton, Penn and Morrison are Transportation Security Administration airport screeners displaced by Hurricane Katrina. They now make the Metroplex their home. They say they have felt welcome here in North Texas, in the terminals.

Requests for their stories have subsided, but they still tell them when asked.

There are many long silences in the stories. Their eyes stare out into space, looking at things beyond words.

At Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, the job is very much the same as it was in New Orleans.

Everything's bigger. Maybe you don't run into the esame people like you do at a smaller airport like New Orleans. (And because D/FW has a more sophisticated baggage-handling system, Penn and Morrison only do passenger screening. Braxton, who was on the disaster response team in New Orleans, now works in the uniform warehouse.)

They say they may visit their old homes, but they will never again live in their old hometown.

If they go again, it will be as tourists.

Dallas-Fort Worth is home.

More than 50 screeners from New Orleans have settled into screening jobs at other airports through the TSA's Safe Haven program, officials said, including 10 at D/FW Airport and two at Dallas Love Field. Houston's Bush Intercontinental and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airports have received the most screeners from New Orleans, with 21 and 14, respectively.

Fort Worth Star Telegram

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