“Don’t lose hope. Keep the faith.” Anne Lucas remembers Katrina.

Anne Lucas worked the Saturday night before Katrina came ashore as a nurse at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Anne tried to evacuate from her home in Metairie on Sunday with her sick dog that was having cluster seizures. As she tried to bypass the deadlocked traffic, she got into a wreck and her car was totaled. She and her dog had to return to Jefferson Parish to wait out the storm. Anne describes the brackish water that she literally was watching rise. The dead silence was broken by the low hum of the water pumps and the helicopters flying over her neighborhood. The helicopters made New Orleans sound like a combat zone. They made Anne think, “Maybe there is someone else out there. Maybe I am not alone.”

Lucas claims that radio talk show host, Garland Robinette, saved her sanity during Hurricane Katrina. When she thought she was all alone, Garland was the only voice she heard for what seemed like 36 hours straight. She remembers Garland broadcasting out of a closet in a hotel because he would not leave his listeners alone. Garland would tell the listeners, “Don’t lose hope,” and, “Keep the faith,” while he was trying to keep from crying himself. Anne says anybody who was stuck in New Orleans during Katrina now has a deeper appreciation of local radio. She broke down in tears as she described her gratitude toward Garland Robinette and the people who kept him on the air during those weeks following Katrina. “Those guys were the heroes, “Anne said about the radio hosts and engineers, “The people that were out there actually doing things and the people that were in a closet in a hotel.”