Working in the Kelly Services corporate office, it was a “temp” job, but I thought it would last longer than most. Using my journalism background, I rewrote corporate contracts for Kelly Services clients nationwide. Essentially, I was removing the legal language from the contracts and making them understandable for anyone, clearly showing the requirements and needs of both the employer and a Kelly Services temporary employee. I was what they used to call a “Kelly Girl.” The company was created initially to fill administrative short term roles for women. Basically, they were part-time or temporary secretaries. Then the company grew into other industries and work arenas and started filling jobs of all kinds with temporary workers.
It was fun. It was consistent and it was great money – the best I’d made in my entire career – and it was less than a mile “commute” from my house. I was on a trajectory to a possible full-time gig and had even met with my bosses on Friday, August 26, and they were planning on giving me more responsibility and were talking about long-term projects. When I clocked out at 5 p.m., I was smiling and looking to celebrate.
But a thousand miles away, Hurricane Katrina was brewing and was coming inland through Florida and headed toward New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It hit the “land mass” and along with the damage from Florida to Alabama to Mississippi and beyond, the Category 5 Hurricane — one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States — took the lives of 1,833. There was $108 billion dollars in damage, and that’s 2005-era dollars.
Katrina took lives, took livelihoods and destroyed homes and businesses. I don’t remember the number, but it was more than 200. Kelly Services offices were damaged or destroyed over that fateful weekend. The corporate office went into survival mode for its business. Anything or anyone not deemed essential was cut loose. I got a call telling me not to come in and that all of my belongings would be in my office chair (yes, I had even brought in my own chair from home) on the first floor and I could pick them up at my convenience.
Just like that. A great job was literally blown away by Katrina. Now I still had a home and nothing was flooded so I was much more blessed than those on the coast who lost everything overnight. I lost a job. They lost a lifetime. They lost loved ones. They lost everything.
Years later, I was interviewing Delta State’s own Barry Lyons who played in the MLB most notably with the New York Mets. His inland home flooded and he nearly lost his life trying to get out. He lost his World Series ring on top of everything else. But he was just happy to be alive to see another day.
Katrina’s reach was far and wide and still bears scars across the coast and beyond. I was talking to a realtor about the area post-Katrina.
She had even lost her own home but said that the rest of that year and 2006 were the busiest she’d ever known in the business.
Folks who lost homes had to find new ones. The ones who could afford to rebuild did but new flooding zones and insurance costs made it too costly for many to rebuild on the land they knew as home. Many of those vacant lots are still vacant, pointing out the continued desecration and destruction that Katrina wreaked.
I was one of the lucky ones in the Katrina wake, only the loss of a job a thousand miles away and not the loss of life or lifetime of memories cruelly wiped away.
