Gentilly looked like a lake after the London Avenue Canal broke and flooded that part of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
But 20 years later, it’s back.
Houses were rebuilt, a golf course was redone, and a university was reborn.
And one familiar face was pivotal in all of that.
“I’m Wendell Pierce, actor, producer and, and neighborhood advocate,” said Wendell Pierce in his Gentilly home.
Pierce has spent his career traveling the world, playing roles on hit shows like “The Wire,” “Jack Ryan” and “Suits.”
And movies like “Twilight,” “Thunderbolts” and “Superman.”
But he grew up here, in Pontchatrain Park.
And on the Saturday before Katrina hit, he had just flown into town, gone to his parents’ home and decided to take a quick nap.
“Had I stayed, it would have been 20 feet of water that I would have been dealing with because I decided to stay. But by the grace of God, I woke up and they were still packing the car and I decided to go with them,” said Pierce.
Pierce and his parents went to Vacherie, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, to stay with family.
Watching coverage on TV, he knew it was bad.
“After the storm came through and the levees broke, the most freithening thing I hear, ‘This is the emergency boardcast system and this is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test.’ And I never heard that before, and levees had broken, and growing up in the city, you know what that means.”
Water was everywhere. Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded.
“And then, when the water receded, a friend called me and say, ‘Make sure you’re with your parents when they go back because it could kill them,'” said Pierce.
The day he took them home still sticks with him.
“It’s like a death in the family, that’s what I tell people, to not have all that memorabilia. My mother had saved all these programs from plays I had done when I was younger. All of that was destroyed,” said Pierce.
So many families found themselves in the same spot.
Everything they owned was lost.
Pontchatrain Park was developed after World War II.
One of the first subdivisions designs for middle-class Black family in the Jim Crow era.
“It was a jewel of fighting foir civil rights,” said Pierce.
Former Mayor’s Ernest and Marc Morial called it home, as did renowned musician Terrance Blanchard and Pierce.
To help with recovery efforts after Katrina, Pierce did Broadway-style plays in hard-hit areas and raised awareness whenever he could.
But he knew he had to do more, especially after some plans called for the area to become green space.
“It became an incubeator of talent, Pontchatrain Park, and then it was detroyed. And I thought about all those people who fought so hard, and I thought about all the people who fight so hard so we could live here and live out our dreams … and I said, ‘We cannot let this go. We have to come back,’ and then they put out plans and we all famously remmebr when they placed a green dot and that was it, that was the factor, an oh hell no. It was a clarion call, you are not goiung to kick us out. And my mom said, ‘Wendell, you got us back, you got to help other people come back,’ and it was a clarion call to call people from my generation to come back and rebuild an area ourt parents had fought so hard for,” said Pierce.
So that is exactly what he did.
Leading efforts to help with builders, contractors and insurance agents.
Making sure people had what they needed and could rebuild or build anew.
“It was a short and difficult learning curve,” said Pierce.
But one that was well worth it.
Years after the storm, in 2020, all the hard work paid off.
Pontchatrain Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places due, in part, to a man who played the most important role of his life, who says what he did was more important than any Emmy, Tony or Oscar.
“Some little kid is going to come up to me and ‘Mr. Pierce, what did you do in New Orleans’ darkest hour?’ And I will have somethign to say; I put together a resident initiative and we built out neighborhoor, brick by brink, house by house, block by block … and rebuilt Pontchatrain Park,” said Pierce.
READ MORE:Faces of Katrina: The Actor: How Wendell Pierce saved Pontchartrain Park
