Two Families and the Hurricane

In Throes of a Diaspora, Two Families Bind

I do love the picture of the 2 little girls.

Ms. O'Lear even offered to home-school Laurel, as she did Hayes, to allow the Mixons to avoid the search for a temporary prekindergarten.

These families have been through a range of emotions with a family they didn't even get to meet in person. This is unspeakably horrible.

So Ms. O'Lear was thrilled to hear Mrs. Jackson's voice, but only for an instant. Mrs. Jackson explained that her father, left behind in a New Orleans veterans' hospital, had died there of dehydration. Her mother, by his side as he lay unattended, had been evacuated to a hospital in Arkansas, but Mrs. Jackson had no idea where. Overcome by grief and anger - "The government killed my daddy," she wailed - Mrs. Jackson said she was headed home, hoping to bury her father and find her mother.
Now it was Ms. O'Lear who was sobbing, clinging to her husband as the family of refugees swallowed her in their embrace. At 9 a.m., these families had been strangers. Had it not been for their children, they most likely would have stayed that way, parting company in an hour or two.