Over the Easter weekend, I read stories of dangerous flooding, tornados tearing through several states, and a wild fire already started. To make matters worse, the hurricane prediction for this season is higher, and stronger storms. Will the month of May be the new season start for the storms? I guess we will have to wait, and pray that there will be a minimum loss of life, and property damage.
All this news brought back memories of Katrina. But it also brought back a memory of a true benefit that occurred, that Kim and I were involved in. I’m not sure I’ve talked about this before. If I have, I apologize to those who know.
After 9/11, Kim and I left New York City, and came back to her small house in Biloxi, Mississippi. Besides Kim’s acting career, she was already an attorney in Louisiana and California. At the start of her acting and dancing career, she was in her home town, New Orleans. Her father was a Public Defender, but that was only one reason she decided to attend law school. She told me jokingly, the other reason was that hanging out actors, there was too much pot. When she attended law school, with upscale students, she found there wasn’t any pot, just cocaine. Now back in Biloxi, she decided to become a Mississippi attorney. Kim was an advocate for abused women and children, and was regularly appointed by the courts to represent these clients.
This went on until Hurricane Katrina. Having lost everything, we were now homeless refugees, in a church shelter in Mobile, Alabama. There, we made some very good friends, and tried to decide our next move. It must have been a church function, where almost all the members attended. One of the members we met was a state senator. Of course, his first interest was her acting career, since he and his wife were familiar with “Cry Baby.” Then he found out that Kim was an attorney in both Louisiana, and Mississippi.
So, this was his idea. Katrina having devastated Louisiana, and Mississippi, there were now women and their children that were living in domestic violent relationships who were forced to flee these toxic relationships in both states, and resettle in Mobile. They obviously need legal representation.
Legal Aide of Mobile, hired Kim on a freelance basis, and myself as her paralegal. They gave us an office in their headquarters. The state of Alabama gave Kim a provisional appointment to the State Bar, until she eventually became an Alabama attorney. Now we had a full case load of women, some with their children, who fled those toxic relationships, and now were able to get a divorce, and start a new life.
It wasn’t easy. The documents of their marriages were now housed in destroyed court houses in the coastal towns both in Louisiana, and Mississippi. When we finally got those documents, they had to be thoroughly disinfected before we could safely use them.
It was almost three years before we finally finished helping those lucky women who were able to flee their abusive relationships, thanks to Hurricane Katrina.
