All hands on deck means a nine-story food run

    After what Deacon Graylin Miller survived during Hurricane Katrina – standing on the railing of his front porch and clinging with one hand to the overhang of his roof to keep his neck and his wife above the floodwaters rushing into his New Orleans East home – the prospect of dealing with Hurricane Isaac seven years later didn’t seem all that daunting.
    A Category 1 storm couldn’t possibly pack much of a punch, right? Deacon Miller’s Katrina battle scars gave him some reassurance as he assessed his role as community manager of the Christopher Inn Apartments, a nine-story independent living residence for seniors on Royal Street operated by Christopher Homes, the archdiocesan affordable housing agency, at the edge of the French Quarter.
    Since there was no mandatory evacuation, about 85 of the 144 seniors who live at Christopher Inn chose to ride things out for Isaac. Everything was going smoothly until the power cut off about 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 29, shutting down both elevators. The center hallways, with apartments on each side, went dark, and the air conditioning fell silent.
    “The first thing we did was make certain no one was stuck in the elevators,” Deacon Miller said.
    No one was, but now it was dark and starting to heat up. And as the days passed without power, an inconvenient situation for the elderly residents could have escalated into something far worse.
    That’s when Christopher Inn’s quiet heroes began to emerge. Michael Thomas, the building’s maintenance man, had practiced as a young kid jumping off his living room sofa with a Superman cape and swooping down on Gotham City to make things right.
    “Every kid dreams of making history, but in New Orleans, the hurricane comes and you get the opportunity to be a hurricane hero,” Thomas said. “To me, I had my cape on, and I was riding in to save someone.”
    The first night the power went out, Thomas, Deacon Miller and assistant manager Cynthia Louis walked up the nine flights to check on and reassure each resident. But as the power outage stretched into days, food and water became an issue.
    Christopher Homes community manager Patricia Fulkerson had brought some breakfast cereal, bananas, milk and water from her northshore home, but she knew the residents were going to need more food, and quickly. She contacted the Salvation Army, which on Sept. 1 began delivering three meals a day.
    There was only one problem – the food was on the first floor and most of the mouths were in the nosebleed section. There was only one way to get the food up, and that was by hiking up the steps.
    Deacon Miller hadn’t done much exercise since the time he was a freshman playing football at St. Augustine.
    “I mow the grass and take care of the grandkids, but that’s about it,” he said.
    Three times a day, the entire staff pushed a cart full of food and water to the outside stairway entrance. Looking like coal-miners with lights on elastic bands wrapped around their foreheads, they carried it all up, nine stories. It was an aerobic stress test.
    “I hurt muscles I never even knew I had,” Deacon Miller said. “There is a certain adrenaline. Since my wife passed away two years ago, I forced myself to go to the doctor. I knew the tests I had taken came out all right, and if my heart started fluttering, I told myself, ‘I just took a heart test.’ Everything just kicked into gear.”
    “By the time I got to the seventh floor, I started shaking a little, but that’s when I tried to push a little extra,” Louis said. “By the time I realized it, I had done all nine floors.”
    For Fulkerson, it was a family affair. Her 14-year-old daughter Kayla not only delivered food to the residents. She also played the piano for those limber enough to come down to the first-floor gathering area. One of the residents, Leonard Michiels, was a classically trained pianist, and he imparted some of his technique and wisdom to Kayla.
    “All she talks about now are the stories he told her and the knowledge he had,” Fulkerson said. “She told me, ‘When he played, he just swayed and he never even had to look at the keys. He just felt it.’”
    Apparently, Kayla’s service had a similar effect on the residents. “It inspired the clients to see this child helping out,” Thomas said. “She kept their spirits up.”
    Thomas never went home from the time the power went out until it came back on Labor Day night. He just kept bringing up food and banging on doors, making sure, in his small way, that Gotham City was safe and secure.
    “You think about the movies when the cowboy saves the woman from the train,” Thomas said. “Once it’s all over, you think about those things, and you smile.”
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].