Choir reaches out to victims of Katrina

Columnist Nicole Brodeur and staff photographer Steve Ringman are traveling with Seattle's Total Experience Gospel Choir as it performs a series of fundraisers for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

LA PLACE, La. — Pastor Patrinell Wright was the last member of the Total Experience Gospel Choir at Birdie's Food and Fuel when she decided the folks behind the counter deserved a little something.

"Go get the core members," she told me. Back came a dozen members, who gathered amid the beer cases, candy racks and fried takeout.

"Encourage my soul and let us journey on, for the night is dark and we are far from home," the choir sang from "The Storm is Passing Over."

The buzz inside the minimart stopped. One of the women behind the counter wiped away tears. Another clasped her hands as if in prayer. It was just what they needed.

"That was real good, that was real nice," said owner Mike Nabut as the choir filed out Tuesday evening.

It was a fitting song for this leg of the choir's journey through some of the South's hardest-hit Gulf communities — battered just a year ago by Hurricane Katrina.

Up the road is Lake Pontchartrain and then on to New Orleans.

Wright's van fell quiet, the closer we got to the city, and the images that up to now had only been on TV were still there to see.

The back of a Motel 6 sheared off. Boarded-up windows. A house that looked as if it were sliding into the water.

This journey was inspired by Christi Recchi, 46, of Seattle who joined the Gospel Choir 18 months ago. A year ago, Recchi sent her daughter Camila, then 17, and son Guiseppe, then 10, to visit her parents in her native Laurel, Miss. Two days after they arrived, Katrina hit.

"By Monday morning, my son was calling me every 45 minutes," Recchi recalled. "I kept saying, 'You're going to be fine. Do what Grandma and Grandpa are telling you. They have been through hurricanes.'

"Then the phone went out."

Recchi couldn't reach them for four days. On the second frantic day, Recchi was on the Vashon ferry with Wright and the choir, headed to a performance.

"I was trying to keep my normal schedule," Recchi explained. "On the ferry, I told Pastor Wright that I had sent my kids to Mississippi and I couldn't get in touch with them, and I am beside myself and I was asking everyone to pray for their safety."

The choir did just that and on the fourth day came the kind of miracle Recchi had been singing about for months: Her brother called from Jackson, Miss., on a satellite phone. He had traded Little Debbie Cakes to call her.

The family was safe. But Wright, the choir's founder and director, decided she wanted to do more than pray. So she and the choir took part in a local relief effort organized by Chris Bennett, chairman of The Seattle Medium newspaper and AM radio stations KRIZ, KYIZ and KZIZ. Five 48-foot trailers full of supplies were sent to New Orleans and beyond.

Wright was pleased but decided the choir should go see the devastation firsthand.

"I didn't decide to do it," Wright said. "I believe in divine intervention. It was put in my head, in my mind and I said, 'OK, God, I'll obey.'

"Do I want to do it? No," she said. "Do I have to do it? Yes."

In January, Wright pitched the idea to the choir. "I told them this was not a vacation. This has to be something you really want to do, because Miss Pat is not going to take any crap from anybody."

Thirty people raised their hands. Wright contacted Katrina Aid Today, an organization run by the United Methodist Church in Gulfport, a hard-hit community on Mississippi's coast.

Wright told Shirley Walker, the organization's director, about the choir, her childhood in Carthage, Texas, and how the choir wanted to help. Walker was dubious.

"If you're another part of the bureaucracy," Walker told Wright, "don't bother coming down here."

"Honey," Wright recounted, "I don't even know how to spell 'bureaucracy.' "

Once they made the commitment, whatever money the choir made performing was put aside to fund the trip. The choir also received $11,000 from Bennett, who says he grew up poor in Georgia.

"We used to get things from the northern cities and I remember the joy that was for us," he said. "You remember that.

"So, we've sent the goods, we've sent the services," Bennett said, "now we're sending spiritual fulfillment and joy, in the form of Rev. Wright and the choir."

Wright sees this trip as a history lesson, something the choir members will think about long after they've come home.

Recchi said she sees it as a way of giving thanks.

"More than anything, it is a way to say 'Thank you, God, for my children.' Because I didn't know if they were dead or alive for four days."

She pauses, lets the tears come. "I never sang 'Hallelujah' and meant it like I do now."

What is Wright looking for?

"I expect to see everything, and I know I will," Wright said. "I'll see hunger, I'll see pain. I'll see tears, I'll see laughter. I'll see joy. I'll see hope. I'll see triumph.

"And I will expect a sigh of relief on my part that I have done the best I can do."

Late Tuesday night the choir's rented vans rolled down Desire Street in New Orleans' storm-battered Ninth Ward.

The caravan pulled into Ratliff Service Station and the choir scrambled out to stretch.

Ernest Ratliff, 59, stood against the only car being fixed at the station, which his family has owned since 1971.

"We came back just before Thanksgiving. Everything was really messed up. FEMA was supposed to step in and do something. ... "

Ratliff estimates he lost about $40,000 — tools and everything — and he feels forgotten.

"Yes," he said. "It's been a year now and all we hear people saying is they're going to fix it."

Ratliff invited the choir over to his home two doors down. They gathered in his driveway and serenaded Ratliff and his family who had gathered with another rendition of "The Storm is Passing Over."

Ratliff leaned against the fence and stared at the ground, mouthing the words, his eyes wet.

Wright walked over and took his hand, then moved to hug his brother, Jimmy.

"This is no accident that this happened," Ratliff told the choir. "This is God's will. Don't take this lightly."

Ratliff's sister-in-law, Tuloha Williams, 39, walked back to a small trailer she now calls home, wiping tears from her eyes. A bucket under the air conditioner catches condensation that they use for bathing.

"It just hurts because we struggle so hard," she said, looking back at the choir. "They pay you, you know, so we paid the house off. But then we didn't have the money to fix the house."

She started to cry again while her son, Jeremy, 10, pressed his head to her side.

"Believe it or not, just them singing ... " she said. "It's rough, though."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.