New Orleans newlyweds met fleeing Katrina
Howard Chenevert and Julie Morgan met at a staging area for evacuees of Hurricane Katrina beside Interstate 10 after floodwaters forced them from their New Orleans homes. They got to know each other on a bus ride to a shelter in Houston.
They got married on September 19 and spent their honeymoon at a motel in Irondale, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The new bride said she noticed from the start that her fellow evacuee was a gentleman.
“He carried my suitcase for me when the buses picked us up, she said today.
Chenevert, 52, who had never married, and Morgan, 48, whose husband died a few years ago, lived about three miles from each other in New Orleans.
On the bus ride to Houston, they sat next to each other. She was surprised at how freely she talked with him.
“After my husband died, I didn’t talk to another man,” she said.
The Travellers Aid Society has bought the newlyweds bus tickets back to New Orleans.
Chenevert has promised to use his carpentry skills to replace furniture his new wife may have lost to the floodwaters.
“He said he would make me a canopy bed. I’ve always wanted one,” she said.
