Delta Regional Authority

 

May 18, 2009

Three days after arriving at Loyola University to start college in August 2005, Victoria Adams was ordered out of town. The reason: Hurricane Katrina was barreling toward New Orleans, and Loyola's leaders, like their counterparts at other local schools, were shutting down and telling their students to get out.

 

The approaching storm didn't faze Adams, who had grown up in Miami. Taking enough clothes and supplies for three days, Adams left. But after Katrina devastated the city, she wound up sitting out the entire semester. She took courses at Florida International University, but she was determined to return.

 

"I've always had a connection to New Orleans," Adams said. "Even though I had been in New Orleans for only a week, I missed it. I wanted to be back, to be with my new friends."

  

Like thousands of other first-year students in local colleges, Adams returned in January 2006 to resume her studies. She became a volunteer and helped repair a Central City church. And now Adams, a music-business major, has landed a job with Ultimate Records, a gospel-music label, in the city she loves.

 

Last weekend, she graduated, a member of the throng of thousands of young men and women who will be known forever as the Katrina Class.

 

"It was really amazing to look at what we had come from," she said. "We had been thrown out, but we chose to return and rebuild the city."

At ceremonies across the city, the accomplishments of this spring's graduates have been celebrated in words, music and videos. The LSU Health Sciences Center gave each graduate a pin bearing the school's logo and the date the storm struck: Aug. 29, 2005. The theme of Xavier University's senior class was "From the Storm to the Stage."

 

Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti called the rebound of the school and the city "the greatest comeback since Lazarus." In an emotional address Saturday at Tulane's commencement, President Scott Cowen gave much of the credit to the robed and gowned graduates sitting before him in the Superdome, calling them "heroes in the truest meaning of the word."

 

"Your spirit, your passion and your unrelenting determination sustained and motivated me during the most challenging time in my life," he said, "and for this, I will be forever grateful to you. . . . Do you realize how few people your age, or any age for that matter, have confronted what you have and not only persevered but thrived? . . . Katrina made you stronger. You will be able to stand up to any challenges you may face."