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"Charleston's Example," Gambit Weekly, Clancy Dubos
NOLAFugees.com correspondent, D. Ellis, Esq., formerly of Charleston, S.C., provides the following counter-point.
Clancy DuBos (a real name?) offers hope for Katrina ravaged New Orleans from the example of Charleston, rebuilt after Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989. Mr. DuBos is able to make this comparison because he has a son who went to college in Charleston and stayed after graduation, so he has visited often. So he knows the city. Imagine what he could teach if M. Dubos also had a daughter in college in Aceh Province, Indonesia.
I lived in Charleston the first 20 years of my life. A couple of years after Hugo, I moved to New Orleans for seven years. I came to Philadelphia for graduate school a few years ago. By Senor DuBos’s logic, I would be most qualified to discuss life in Philadelphia, or at least my father would. But in spite of my not having a son in college anywhere, the editors of NOLAFugees.com have asked for my opinion on these two cities where I lived the bulk of my life.
No, Charleston’s spirit was not broken. Most people who suffered losses from Hugo did choose to return and remain, perhaps because their homes weren’t putrified by the stench and filth left behind by receding floodwaters. So as to the inspiration Clancy claims you all ought to feel, I guess I would first point out that among several advantages that Charleston had in rebuilding, the most prominent is that the city wasn't completely submerged for a week after the hurricane hit.
At the same time, Charleston has always been known for successfully maintaining the illusion of antique charm, at least in a limited geographic area. Back in 1860, visitors to the presidential convention praised Charleston for its historic atmosphere. You don’t maintain that kind of illusion without a certain amount of expertise; we already had a pretty slick system in place for "rebuilding". The “charming, historic” Charleston which Cap’n Clancy praises is a very small area of the city, though obviously the only part he knows. It doesn’t comprise the suburbs, and is roughly analogous to the French Quarter/Garden District/Uptown strip of New Orleans. If that’s all you’re worried about rebuilding, you’re almost there. Good for you, New Orleans!
Charleston also had a head start in that its black population was already thoroughly and definitely segregated. (These are the looters our heroic police chief braved the storm to beat down.) Massa C apparently failed to notice this while visiting his son, or else saw it as part of the city’s charm. Ditto the poor whites. All our insurance money, therefore, was easily channeled into making already affluent areas even more affluent, and catching those areas that were affluent but needed renovations up to speed—or else pushing out the uninsured and replacing them with homes and businesses flush with insurance money.
I won’t address CDB’s points about the great food (it’s exactly like any other small east coast city), music (if bluegrass can be so called), or busy foot traffic until the wee hours (just be out of the bars by 2). Charleston did show that “a city with charm and history can rebuild without losing its soul.” It kept its soul, which is and always has been its illusion of staid and unyielding aristocracy.
There’s no reason New Orleans can’t do the same. Laissez les bon temps roulez!
