Martha Rial, Post-Gazette photos On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, residents join hands in unity on the levee in East New Orleans during a candlelight vigil to honor those who died.

By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

They all have a story. Talk to any of them, and they'll share a deeply personal tale of escape, of despair, of disbelief, of a rebuilt home, of a lost city, of a lost year. Along the Gulf Coast, it's a universal thread, something that connects people in a manner not unlike the ties that bind those who lived through the Great Depression, or Sept. 11. Twelve months after Hurricane Katrina, the survivors look back on what's become of their lives.

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Still living from day to day, hour to hour

	Gary Portie marked a utility pole on his property in Plaquesmines Parish so he wouldn't forget how high the flood waters rose. Click photo for larger image. Listen in: The PG's Bill Toland talks with Gary Portie, born and raised an hour or so southeast of New Orleans: Coming home after the storm, what he found when he got there. Day-to-day life, how has it all changed. From the beginning, riding out the storm and paddling their way home again. Katrina / A Year after Graphic: New Orleans' struggle to recover from Katrina, in .pdf format Slideshow: Katrina / Coming home, moving on Sunday: Brave face hides big hurt in Big Easy Monday: In New Orleans, is it rebuilding or rebirth? Photojournal: Katrina One Year After

TRIUMPH, La. -- Forty-four days. That's how long the floodwater sat after Hurricane Katrina, inundating the lower reaches of Plaquemines Parish with chin-high water.

Gary Portie, born and raised an hour or so southeast of New Orleans, couldn't wait that long to know what had become of his home along the Belle Chase Highway. He was away at work, so he sent his wife, Alice, and his 17-year-old son, Andrew, to inspect the property three weeks after the hurricane.

Mother and son drove as far as they could, to Port Sulphur, then put their boat in the water near the levee that's supposed to protect this stretch of earth. Then they paddled in, using a communal flat boat that had been left along the side of the road by others who were similarly eager to inspect their properties.

What they found was a house of about 1,600 square feet that had been lifted from its foundation and batted back and forth like a badminton birdie. "It drifted, hit the trees," Mr. Portie said, pointing to a streak of mud on his property. It drifted across the yard, toward the utility poles.

Then their home of 11 years cracked down the middle. It was still standing when mother and son arrived, but it couldn't be salvaged.

The family, too, got batted around, spending time near New Orleans, then in Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital city. In March, they were given a FEMA trailer, which became their home until this July, when a new mobile home was delivered to the site of the old house.

Like many flood victims along the Gulf Coast, one year hasn't been nearly enough time for Mr. Portie and family to piece together what's been fractured. The lost year "is like a big hole in your life." A year without grocery stores or gas stations. A year that was partly spent living under martial law.

"You're starting to get all your ducks in a row," he said.

"You get everything just the way you like it, and you start to think life is good. Then you leave home, and when you come back, it's all gone. ... Sanity's hard. I believe most of us down here, we still are day-to-day. Some of us, maybe, still hour-to-hour."

Too much pain, all at once

NEW ORLEANS -- This is pain: A year ago, Katrina drove Juanita Perreand from her New Orleans East home and into a trailer. On Oct. 29, 2005, her husband, Eric, died of stroke complications. On June 27, her son was murdered, along with his girlfriend, daughter and nephew.

Juanita Perreand (with 2-year-old grandaughter Emily Perreand) outside of her FEMA trailer at her New Orleans East home. Click photo for larger image.

From that week's Times-Picayune:

"Two gunmen executed four people Tuesday night in a drug-related, gangland-style barrage of gunfire that St. Tammany authorities called the parish's deadliest crime in decades. The victims were identified Wednesday morning as Roxann Agoglia, 36; her boyfriend, Eric Perreand Jr., 40; their daughter, Erica Agoglia, 16; and Perreand's nephew, Andrew Perreand, 15."

Last week, St. Tammany Parish detectives released sketches of the gunmen, who haven't been caught or identified. After the murders, investigators revealed that the victims had ingested a pharmacy's worth of illegal narcotics and addictive prescription drugs.

Somehow, in an insane year, Ms. Perreand has clung to sanity. Barely.

"It's been very hard on me," said Ms. Perreand, who is living in a FEMA-issued trailer with an assortment of children and grandchildren.

"When you don't have nobody, you don't want to do this by yourself. ... It's too much, all at once."

That's the thing about pain. Sometimes it comes in waves.

'Where else you gonna go?'

LAKESHORE, Miss. -- Wilbur LaFleur says he found his wife's body two blocks from where their home near the Mississippi coast once stood.

He followed a trail of pots and pans and dishes, strewn by the 20-foot flood surge, and near a lake he found Connie Frymire, his wife of a quarter-century.

"My wife was a hard-headed woman. She wouldn't leave, and I left. And I found her seven days later, when they let me come back and search the place," the 70-year-old man said.

A year ago today, he lost his wife, a dog, a beloved talking parrot and his home, one of the many in Lakeshore that were obliterated by Katrina. Church groups, including an Amish work crew from Pennsylvania, helped build him a new house on the site of his old one.

He spread his wife's ashes nearby, in a rose garden.

Others in his neighborhood might think twice about rebuilding in the same spot, but not Mr. LaFleur.

	Wilbur LaFleur was one of the first to rebuild on the Mississippi coast. Click photo for larger image. Listen in: The PG's Bill Toland talks with Wilbur LaFleur about loss and coming back home: LaFleur talks about losing his wife, his home, a dog and his beloved talking parrot. LaFleur tells why he's in the "book between hell and high water" with the loss of his hard-headed wife of 25 years who wouldn't leave when Katrina struck.

"Where else you gonna go?" he said. "If it happens, you start again, if the good Lord provides."

Clearing the weeds

NEW ORLEANS -- One man's absurdity is another man's solace: On this swampy bayou afternoon, David Cabiran could be found eradicating weeds with a gas-powered trimmer outside his home at 6245 Curie St., a renovated blue-shingled duplex in New Orleans's Gentilly neighborhood.

Never mind that the grass across the street is knee-high. And never mind that the rest of the homes on the block are, at best, in a state of mild disrepair, and at worst about to fall over. Never mind the stinking hill of rubbish within sight. Never mind that this ritualistic whacking of weeds, in the aesthetic scheme of things, makes about as much sense as polishing the silver on the Titanic.

"What else can you do?" he asked, in a manner suggesting that the smallest of accomplishments can bring about the greatest satisfaction.

Mr. Cabiran has been remodeling his home off and on since last September, after city officials allowed Gentilly residents to return to their homes.

The flood climbed 9 feet here. At first, "I refused to believe it," he said. But the foreign boat and other debris in his backyard had a way of driving home the point.

"I didn't have flood insurance," he said. "I've been doing just about everything myself."

In search of Darryl

NEW ORLEANS -- A body, that's what Patrice Milton wants.

Something to bury. Something to finally say goodbye to.

After the hurricane, her 28-year-old cousin, Darryl Milton, and his fiancee, Pam Washington, were trapped in the attic of their Lower Ninth Ward home along Jourdan Avenue, the street closest to the levee that eventually burst.

A frantic phone call was the last his family ever heard from him: "Send help," he said. "Call 911."

That's what Patrice Milton and family did. But help never arrived.

They held onto hope. Even when they visited the Lower Ninth weeks later and saw that a hulking barge was now resting where their Jourdan Avenue home used to be, they held onto hope, grasping at wisps.

Maybe he was in a coma. Maybe he had amnesia.

Hope evaporated in March, when Pam Washington's body was found. If she didn't survive, Darryl probably didn't, either. He's one of the hundreds of Katrina victims who were never found alive, and never found dead.

With each new corpse -- and they are still being retrieved -- the family hopes that DNA tests will show that the body is Darryl's. But earlier this month, the Miltons received a letter from the local coroner, telling them that Darryl's body may never be found.

Last week, about a dozen family members met at the Superdome, dressed in matching T-shirts bearing Darryl's picture. They want the world to know that Katrina's toll is still growing, even if the Louisiana Family Assistance Center -- nicknamed the "Family Find Center" -- is closing without having solved the mystery of Darryl's whereabouts.

They want the world to know they still miss Darryl. And that they're still looking for him.

"We want to give him a proper burial," his cousin said.

Of memories and memorials

GULFPORT, Miss. -- Henry Greene grew up three hours north of here, but spent lots of summer days on Gulfport's white sandy beaches.

He's since moved to Indiana, but he returned to Gulfport yesterday for his first post-Katrina tour of the Gulf Coast. He found the beaches, and most of what once stood near them, in ruin.

"I have a lot of childhood memories," he said, standing near the remains of what appears to have been an apartment building, overlooking the Mississippi Sound. A wall that once supported the structure, 40 feet long and 6 feet high, has been converted into a makeshift Katrina memorial.

Wincing into the sunlight, Mr. Greene reviewed the memorial -- small American flags, hand-scrawled messages of hope, trinkets left on the wall by visitors. Behind the wall, and to the east, is another makeshift testimony to the destruction that Katrina wrought. It is a pavilion for rows upon rows of white FEMA trailers, where many Gulfport residents who lost their home in the hurricane now live.

With two cameras slung over his shoulders, Mr. Greene marveled at the distance, literal and metaphorical, between the destroyed beachfront homes and the nearby trailer park.

"Now, these people who were living in luxury are living on the other side of things," he said.