OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. -- His name is Jock Wayne, but he's always been known as Two Bags.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Jock Wayne, 72, walks to the edge of Biloxi Bay in Ocean Springs hoping to get a glimpse of his storm-damage apartment building. He has been living with his sister in Ocean Springs, Miss., since the hurricane. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage More pictures: Martha Rial documents the struggle back from Katrina Previous stories Mississippi storm victims gather to pray, weep Pascagoula 'endeavors to persevere'

For much of his adult life, he worked sparingly, traveled a lot, and packed as little as possible. Then he got old and sick and ended up living alone at a seniors apartment complex in Biloxi, Miss.

A week ago, Hurricane Katrina leveled Biloxi. By then, Two Bags was down to one bag and sleeping on a mattress at a nearby shelter. On Wednesday, he moved into his sister's apartment in Ocean Springs, which was not as badly damaged as Biloxi even though they are just a few miles apart.

Sunday morning, Wayne walked a few blocks from that apartment to a point where he could gaze across Biloxi Bay to the native city he had decided to return to five years ago after reconnecting with five childhood friends.

A severe case of arthritis required that he use a cane. He wore his customary all-black outfit -- the only clothes he still owns -- save for a white cap that matched hair and beard .

From that distance, it was difficult to gauge the impact of Katrina on Biloxi, where hundreds have died and nearly every building is damaged or destroyed. You could see the Grand Casino tipped onto its side. Another casino, Isle of Capri, one of nine in the city, was missing from the cityscape and was presumed lost at sea.

Within two years of moving to Biloxi, all of Wayne's childhood friends died. But, surprisingly, he found comfort being rooted in an apartment that overlooked the Gulf and enjoyed the company of the other residents at Santa Maria del Mar.

Now, that life has been shattered by Katrina not only for Wayne, who is 72, but for thousands of other displaced Gulf Coast seniors. Some are without all their medications, some are disoriented and depressed, and certainly most of them, according to Wayne, are traumatized by having to leave their homes.

"A lot of those older people have not processed this," said Wayne .

The day before the storm, Wayne said goodbye to his friends and boarded a Catholic Diocese of Biloxi bus for a shelter in D'Iberville, north of Biloxi. There, he watched his fellow seniors struggle. A man fell out of his wheelchair and into his own urine. Another died and was bundled up in a plastic bag and kept at the shelter until he could be carried away.

"They did the best they could; they were just overwhelmed," he said.

And then there was the couple who slept by his side -- the husband a frail man, the wife suffering from Alzheimer's.

"She'd tap me on the knee and say, 'Bernard, Bernard,'" Wayne said. "They were a very sweet [couple]."

'I'd go home any way I can'

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Bernard and Olive Aronstam, of Lakeview, La., are living in a shelter at Biloxi High School, but they'd rather go home. Click photo for larger image.

Wayne's Bernard turned out to be Bernard Aronstam. He and his wife, Olive, were moved from D'Iberville to the Gulfport High School shelter a few days ago. Yesterday, Aronstam frantically searched for information on New Orleans, which he and his wife reluctantly left a week ago Sunday.

"I'd go home any way I can. Plane, train, bus, car," he said.

Wayne's assessment of the couple was correct. Olive Aronstam, 82, hugged everyone who came near and called them darling;e her 72-year-old husband, though frail and desperate, was exceedingly polite and protective of his ailing wife of 42 years.

He recalled how they moved 28 years ago from their native South Africa to New Orleans, where he became an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. He also said with a sweet, sad smile that his only kin is a stepson who lives in South Africa and who has no idea where his parents are.

Finding old friends, feline and human

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Helyn Joyce, 79, with her cat Tristen, rescued the day before from her hurricane-damaged high rise apartment building in Biloxi. They are living in a breezeway at Biloxi High School. Click photo for larger image.

Nearby, Helyn Joyce was in a celebratory mood. Judy Miller, a health care worker, rescued Joyce's cat, Tristen, on Sunday from, of all places, Santa Maria del Mar -- Wayne's complex. Told Wayne was safe, Joyce was elated.

"I like him; he's a nice guy," she said.

A Connecticut native and longtime resident of Las Vegas, Joyce moved to Biloxi from New Orleans eight years ago after her fiance died and she had heart surgery. Despite the shelter's crowded and somewhat chaotic condition, Joyce, who uses a wheelchair, wore her make-up just so and had one of the tidiest floor mattresses in the place.

Like the Aronstams, Joyce has a single living relative -- a daughter living in South Dakota whom she has not contacted. She didn't seem to mind. Asked what she's doing next, Joyce said with Yankee vigor: "I'm going back to Las Vegas."

She's 92 and she's not leaving

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Marie Wals rolls her wheelchair out the front door and onto the porch of her Gulfport home. Click photo for larger image.

While the storm blew a week ago, 92-year-old Marie Wals, of Gulfport, cooked herself a hamburger and a couple of eggs in the cinderblock shanty where she has lived alone since her husband died eight years ago.

The wind uprooted a towering cedar tree, which just missed her house, shredded the home next door, and chased everyone else in the neighborhood away.

Except for Wals.

"I just sat there and drank my coffee," she said yesterday afternoon, firmly planted in a wheelchair on her front porch. In the eight days since Katrina hit, Wals had yet to leave her home, which somehow remained dry. Friends and neighbors tried to get her to depart before and after Katrina, but she has refused.

So stout is Wals, that one day last week she wheeled herself into her front yard and gathered up a pile of debris with a rake missing half its tines.

Explaining the source of her strength and direction and surviving Katrina, she said: "I live by the Bible, not by man. I sat back there eating [during the storm] and the Main Man -- he's the reason I'm here."

Her two sons are dead, an adopted son is in prison and a grandson who lives near has yet to come by. But it doesn't appear to bother Wals.

"What can I do?" she asked.

It does disturb a friend of hers, Shirley Cunningham.

"It hurts me to see older people like that. Ain't no way I'd leave my Mama like that," she said.