Saint Bernard Parish Today

Tuesday afternoon, I drove from our Lakeshore offices out Interstate 10 east toward St. Bernard Parish. It’s been weeks since I’ve been out this way and the changes are noticeable. What used to be Lake Forest Mall is now a pile of rubble. Apartment complexes damaged by Katrina are now vacant lots. A store is operating here, a tire dealership or automobile agency there, but mostly the place is deserted and shopping centers are defunct.

Interstate 510 South to Paris Road leading into St. Bernard, the report is mixed. Some places out of business for nearly two years, a law office in a trailer, the prows of boats still poking out of the canal where Katrina left them, some places doing great business. Some of the fast food restaurants look brand new and were filled at 1:30. Construction trucks speeding up and down a busy St. Bernard Highway.

Workers have torn down the educational building beside the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Chalmette. Builders for Christ is mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to erect a new, modern sanctuary over the remains of the old one. Right now, it appears they have their work cut out for them.

Downriver, a newly restored mansion sits beside one the hurricane gutted out and which has not been touched since. People are rebuilding their homes up against the levees on the other side of which flows the mighty Mississippi. Either they have great confidence in the Corps of Engineers or the Lord or something. Scary.

Poydras Baptist Church looks good. Last I heard, they’re still meeting in their fellowship hall until the sanctuary is rebuilt. Half their membership still displaced.

Boogie Melerine was the object of this trip. He promised to give me a tour of the Creedmore Presbyterian Church a few miles south of Poydras, the church that the Presbytery of South Louisiana is donating to Boogie’s Delacroix-Hope congregation for their new site.

“I want to see your upholstery shop,” I told Boogie. “How can you put 70 people in there on Sunday?” He said, “We’ve had as high as 90.” Walk through his garage and you enter what functions as the fellowship hall of his congregation. Tables and chairs remain set up for Sunday. “We eat here after church every Sunday. About half stay.”


“The workers had to remove a wall to open up this space for our worship.” Some 70 chairs are in place, hymnals on the seats, ready for church. An upright piano in the front, a small pulpit, and a sound system. How did we ever function without sound systems?

I said, “So much for people needing worshipful architecture before they can pray and worship.” He laughed. One back wall of their worship room was the overhead doors of the garage. Someone once said Americans are the only people in the world who require a “worshipful” setting before they can commune with God. The rest of the world, give them a spot under a shade tree or a creek bank.

We drove down toward the end of this highway. “Dead end one mile,” the sign read. And on the right was the Creedmore Church. A half-dozen workers were busy washing down the walls and killing the mold. We walked inside. The floor is stripped to concrete and the walls to the studs. The worship center looks like it could accommodate 200 people. In the back is a fellowship hall with pews pushed together. “We’ll meet here until we have the sanctuary ready,” Boogie said.

“Beautiful stained glass windows.” He said, “A man in the church made them.” Not elaborate and not great art as some churches display, but the bright colors and biblical themes dress up this little building.

“We’ll have rooms for nursery and toddlers, two bathrooms, an office, and a classroom as well as the kitchen and fellowship hall.” There’s no parking as such, just a grassy expanse in front and a driveway that circles the building.

“They received $30,000 from the Bush-Clinton Katrina fund and that’s what the Presbytery is doing now. They have to spend it on this church. When the money runs out, they’ll give the building and property to us. We’ll still have a lot of work to do on it.”

What about the eight or so members of this little church? “They’ll be joining the Delacroix-Hope Baptist Church.” But it’s not like they’re doing something strange. These are all neighbors. They’ve known each other since forever. This is not like the neighborhood I live in where you only know the people whose house abuts yours in each direction.

“We moved to our house two weeks before Hurricane Betsy struck,” Boogie said. That would be August of 1965.

On the way back into town, I stopped at what the sign calls Hopeview Baptist Church and which is now a center to host church volunteers coming to help rebuild that part of the world. About 20 volunteers were on the grounds, most from Conway, SC, one from Washington, DC, and two or three others from someplace else. The worship center is set up with rows of tables and all around the wall is what one would normally find in a pantry: lots of boxes of foodstuffs. Several women were working in the hall, some people were unloading items from a rental truck in the front, and a half dozen men and boys upstairs were working on the electrical wiring.

The upstairs of this church does not cover the full floor, but just a ring around the sanctuary with small rooms for bunk beds and bathrooms. I’m confident there were 200 beds, perhaps 10 to a room. I poked my head in every one of them, often surprising a worker and introducing myself. Holly was using the commode as a chair as she installed bathroom fixtures. We chatted and spoke of Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, VA, her home congregation.

Up the road–this is Judge Perez Drive–I passed the still unused and still unusable St. Bernard Baptist Church. We assume Pastor Paul Gregoire is still waiting on insurance money or a settlement from Murphy Oil whose busted tank added seriously to the hurricane tragedy in this part of the parish, or both.

Chalmette High School was just letting out. St. Bernard Baptist and FBC-Chalmette are still meeting there on Sunday mornings, and plan to do so for the foreseeable future.

This is the only public high school operating in the parish. The school downriver in Boogie’s neighborhood–the sign calls it St. Bernard High School–is still not operating, he said. Some 3,800 students attend the 3 schools in this parish, down from 8,000 pre-K. Everyone’s hero around here is Doris Voitier, superintendent of St. Bernard schools. Not long after residents were allowed to return to the parish following the hurricane, Ms. Voitier announced that schools would be reopening quickly and she pulled it off with such an efficiency that everyone was shocked. She is being honored right and left for such leadership, and deservedly so.

Monday, the new state superintendent of education, Paul Pastorek, was touring the parish and hearing from Ms. Voitier and her teachers. The paper said this was his first stop of a 30-day tour of the state. Pastorek checked out Andrew Jackson Elementary and announced how impressed he was by their program that takes children as young as 3. “St. Bernard may be the only school system in the state that offers preschool to 3-year-olds,” he said. “I know it’s expensive, but you’ve got to keep doing it.”

The point here simply being that in that parish which is hardly functioning, where more than half the businesses and homes still lie in ruins, something is working extremely well.

The steel girders rise into the air at what used to be FBC-Arabi and which promises to be Celebration Church of St. Bernard. The girders look like the chestbones of a dinosaur on its back. The sign promises worship services soon.

More homes are going up in the Musician’s Village/Baptist Crossroads tract just off North Claiborne Street. Driving the two block strip of Alvar Street in front of the completed Habitat homes, you see bikes on porches and flowers everywhere. Signs that people are living here and enjoying it.

A Gray Line tour bus drove slowly through the Lower 9th Ward. Some are offended at that, but outsiders and visitors need a way to see the devastation of the city and if they don’t have a friend to show them around, what better way than in a bus. So, I’m for it.

We want them to see the city. We want them to know that regardless of what editors and politicians say in other cities and states, New Orleans and its environs are a long, long way from being normal. We say this so often that it sounds trite, but we’re going to be needing help for a long time to come.

Help of the prayer-kind, too. There were four murders last night in New Orleans alone, making seven since Friday evening and today is Tuesday.

2 thoughts on “Saint Bernard Parish Today

  1. I was also one of those staying and working at the Hopeview Facility. It was such an honor and blessing to serve the Lord with brothers and sisters in Christ from Kentucky, South Carolina and California. My home church is Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church VA outside of Washington DC.

    I pray those reading this article will prayerfully consider coming to help in the rebuild efforts.

    Blessings!

  2. Continued prayers. And offerings. And teams.

    Looking forward to having you up here later this month.

    Greg Loewer

    Columbia Baptist Church, Falls Church, VA

    NorthStar Church Network: An Association of Baptist Congregations

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