Katrina -- a touching story

Like everyone else in this community, I am overwhelmed with a combination of heartache and rage at the events in New Orleans and elsewhere.  This post, however, is about a small heartwarming story that took place amidst the horror.  It is particularly poignant in light of the racial aspect of the catastrophe in New Orleans.

My aunt and her family has lived in New Orleans for the last fifty plus years.  They were fairly affluent and lived in a nice, large house.  They employed a cook, a black woman (my aunt is white) who grew very close to my aunt (and vice versa) over the decades.  The cook (I'd rather not use names) retired fifteen or twenty years ago, but she and my aunt stayed in touch.

Fast forward to this week.  My aunt and much of her family evacuated on Sunday to Houston, where one of the family members has a house.  As it turns out, my Aunt's former cook now makes her home in Houston as well.  As with hundreds of thousands of other folks, my aunt has money in a bank with no way to access it.  The former cook, meantime, has handled her finances well.  She has just now generously lent my aunt a relatively large sum of money to meet her short term cash needs.

The world would be so much better if each of us simply treated every person on the assumption that some day our life would depend on that person's generosity.