Thank you, Drew!

When Drew Brees led the New Orleans Saints to victory in Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010, Clarion Herald editor Peter Finney Jr. was in Sun Life Stadium. It was a memory of a lifetime. Here is his column from Feb. 7, 2010.

By Peter Finney Jr.
MIAMI – The lifelong black-and-gold vision hit me, finally, on Tuesday morning during Super Bowl XLIV media day at Sun Life Stadium.

As a cradle Who Dat, born, reared and eventually resettled in New Orleans, I scarcely could believe the work of folk art emerging from the green grass. There, in the north end zone, an NFL paint crew using spray guns drew the improbable vision for me in black capital letters, 20 feet tall: “SAINTS.”

After finishing the black letters, the artists then worked on filling in the negative space with gold paint. For me, the spray paint could have been 24-karat gold. The Technicolor picture – 10 by 53 1/3 yards – had a surreal, Dorothy-from- Kansas quality. The yellow brick road on the way to Oz never looked any better – especially in light of the Saints’ mesmerizing and emotionally uplifting 31-17 victory over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.

Anyone from New Orleans can tell you last night’s Super Bowl was never exclusively about football. Reflecting on those days in 2005 when a great American city went wet and dark, I can bring only two words to mind: horrors and heroes.

Katrina exposed to America’s eyes the searing poverty and human need that existed but had remained hidden in New Orleans for decades. Truth be told, every major American city has those disparities, but New Orleans has the location and the topography that allowed Katrina to blow open the lock to Pandora’s box.

Among the best two hours I spent immediately after the storm came at a seminar presented by experts on traumatic stress. They predicted, with uncanny accuracy, the roller coaster of emotions that would hit everyone over the next few days, months and years.

“You will lose track of time, your decision-making will be jumbled, you will have difficulty remembering things,” one psychologist said. “You are not going crazy. This is a normal coping mechanism. You could have these up-and-down feelings for two to five years or longer.”

Adversity affects everyone differently. The suicide rate in New Orleans skyrocketed in the months immediately after Katrina and has remained far above the national average since then. What Katrina couldn’t take instantly, she took by simply biding her time.

Our children’s pediatrician, his practice under water, committed suicide. Someone we know lost his house and nearly lost his life when he got into a confrontation with police, backing up his car in their direction to run them down. He begged the police to pull the trigger. He wanted out of his misery. Only because one of the officers knew him is he still alive. That was a Katrina miracle.

It’s funny how you remember things. Even without a measuring tape, I now know exactly what 4 1/2 feet is: It is the distance from the ground to my chest. That was the water line in our house near Lake Pontchartrain. Had we lived four blocks closer to the lake – I know that sounds counter-intuitive – we would have been dry. That’s because New Orleans is built like a saucer, with the higher ground located nearest the Mississippi River and the lake.

I remember pulling our piano out of the house. I’m not that strong, but I did it by myself. The wood, under a caustic brew of salt water and God knows what for three weeks, simply pulled apart like cardboard. My wife was so traumatized she could not bring herself to return to the house. She finally was able to come and say her goodbyes the day before we sold it. She is a survivor, not a statistic.

While the government’s response was abysmal at all levels, the heroes came in droves. There were the church and volunteer groups arriving from across the country with hearts and hands and sweat to resuscitate a city on life support. Incredibly, they are still coming, performing miracles, one house at a time.

The Saints stayed, survived and thrived. When they made their emotional return to the restored Superdome on Sept. 25, 2006 – 13 months after Katrina – and defeated the Falcons on national television, the transformation of a city’s people from victims to survivors took another major step. The palace of pain – which sheltered 30,000 refugees after the storm and where 12 people died – had become the shining city on a hill.

That night, U2 and Green Day unveiled their pulsating song, “The Saints Are Coming.” And now, the Saints marched here, all the way to Super Bowl XLIV and an NFL championship.

Yes, tears are flowing like a river.

I am not trivializing people’s pain when I say the Saints contributed mightily to the region’s collective psychic recovery. In 2006, when thousands were living in FEMA trailers, the Saints sold out every seat in the Superdome. Many fans – living in their front yards, so close and yet so far from home, while they waited on insurance settlements and honest contractors – expressed the feeling that they considered supporting the Saints their civic duty.

Newly arrived coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees, a pair of out-of-towners, gave the Saints passion, purpose and swagger. They lifted hearts. They touched souls.

They painted the end zone.

And then they stepped back and allowed every Who Dat traumatized by water and wind to paint Bourbon Street black and gold.

The resurrection story has just begun.

“I have the feeling like it was all meant to be, it was all destined,” Brees, the Super Bowl MVP said while clutching the Vince Lombardi Trophy to his chest. “We knew we had the entire city, maybe the entire country behind us. It doesn’t get any better than that. The celebration is not going to end.”

2021 postscript: From all of us, thank you, Drew!

pfinney@clarionherald.org