Editor's note: This column was first published on Monday, before the Saints-Falcons Game.Tell me at least some of them will be there. Tell me at least a few of 30,000 people who lived their personal hell inside the
Superdome just over a year ago will be there. Six people died in that decaying 31-year-old building; one committed suicide, another overdosed. People could not sleep without fear cuddling beside them. A National Guardsman was shot outside and numerous other atrocities occurred.
A little something inside each of us, in fact, died inside that ancient edifice as we watched those survivors of
Katrina' deadly wrath
endure an existence we thought could not occur. Not in our America.
Now, we know better. We're not that dumb anymore.
On Monday evening, New Orleans will celebrate the return to the 'Dome of its vagabond
New Orleans Saints when the team hosts the
Atlanta Falcons and an ESPN Monday Night Football National Television audience. The joint will be jumping with dignitaries -- NFL commissioners past and present, ex-President Bush and local and state politicos galore. I wouldn't be surprised if they all strolled into the building behind a Bourbon Street band while thrusting colorful parasols towards the sky. Ain't no party like a Bayou party.
That the Saints are there at all this soon is at the smallish end of the miracle scale. Not because repairing the massive structure was all that tough in this age of construction magic, BUT because it came together with a coalition that was so efficient and effective, that it presents a stark contrast to the rest of the Katrina response. It infuriates me that a similar coalition could not have been as efficient and effective and perhaps repaired more of New Orleans by now.
The extensive repair and renovation cost $185 million, most of it ($116 million) provided by those fine folks at
FEMA. Other contributors were the Superdome commission ($41 million), the NFL ($15 million) and the state of Louisiana ($13 million). More important, the money found its way to the right people and those people got done what needed to be done, and in a timely fashion.
What a concept.
Those amounts are pittances compared to what's needed to rebuild New Orleans and its citizens' lives. Over $100 billion was appropriated by Congress to revive the Gulf Coast. Half was earmarked for housing; thirty-mill for emergency and Department of Defense needs. The rest was tabbed for infrastructure rebuilding, health, socials services, job training, education, agriculture and just about anyone else with a hand out.
I don't have to tell you what's happened to the money. We've seen enough still-sorrowful images of late to know it's been either ill-spent or unspent. A plague of incompetence extending from DC to Baton Rouge to the carpeting beneath
Ray Nagin's desk is the reason Katrina's victims are still victims; victims of a system that ignored all warnings to shore up the levees, and now can't seem to get much of anything right.
Your tax dollars are definitely not at work, at least not in the Gulf.
The return of the Saints will be hailed as a significant moment in the timeline of New Orleans' re-birth. Not long ago, it seemed as if Saints owner
Tom Benson was about as eager to return to the city as the hundreds of thousands of its former citizens who've found better lives elsewhere. The team was bad, the building was worse and the fans were as mad as the designated driver on Bourbon Street.
And yet somewhere along the way, the city, Benson and the Saints -- who’d, played 'home' games in any stadium that would have them and regularly shuttled between locker rooms and gyms across several states -- all realized just how much they meant to each other.
And, oh yeah, the Saints got
Reggie Bush.
Benson now says he'll stay as long as the city will have him. The players are giddy to get their warm showers and familiar weight room back. And New Orleans is beside itself over Bush, a new coach, a new QB and their new, now-undefeated Saints.
Yeah, Monday will be a party. But were the right people invited?
Some may have been. But most will probably be at home, wherever that is.
