Epilogue: On the whole, life is beautiful here

That student is back in Louisiana, but his family remains -- loving the city and the schools, but missing good seafood.

Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina swallowed the life Earl and Shaeron Turner always had known in New Orleans, sending them far from the unpredictable Gulf and its devastating handiwork.

They landed in Lincoln, where home became a duplex on the southeast side of town, where pots of beans bubble on the stove and Shaeron makes fried chicken and gumbo and takes care of her family.

But the gumbo isn't the same, not when the only seafood around has been frozen for ages -- and neither, really, is anything else.

"Being from New Orleans, it's a different life. Totally different," Shaeron said. "We had to get used to it."

Life is not bad here, because this Midwestern city welcomed them, helped them at every turn, made sure they had everything they needed. It still does.

"On the whole, life is beautiful here," Shaeron said. "The people are great. They were great when we got here."

Those at Nebraska Wesleyan University led the way, finding them an apartment, furniture and anything else they needed.

Their oldest son, Earl, was a student there. He had come north a few years earlier, following his wife, who got a fellowship to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Earl enrolled at UNL, then transferred to Wesleyan. He already had been trying to persuade his parents to come north.

They still weren't considering it when Hurricane Katrina was at their city's doorstep.

It was, after all, New Orleans, no stranger to the wind-whipped anger of hurricanes.

City officials were telling people to leave the city, Shaeron recalls. The Turners did what they usually did when the threat was imminent: They went to Shaeron's sister's home, on higher ground, with more stories above the ground.

The warnings persisted, got more dire.

City officials wanted people to leave the city by Monday, and the Turners did what they never had done before: They packed up five carloads of family on a Sunday in 2005 and headed to Houston.

They figured they would be back midweek.

"By Wednesday, the whole city was flooded and we were on our way here."

Evacuate.

It sounds simple. It's not. It requires money for food and gas and a hotel, and there is only so long you can afford to live like that.

So the Turners -- Earl, Shaeron and two of their three children, Travis and Kiana -- headed to Lincoln and the son going to school here.

Most of their family eventually returned to New Orleans, and they figured they would follow.

"I thought, ‘We'll come, we'll stay for a month and go back,'" Shaeron said. "But it was such chaos in the city."

Shaeron's paycheck was supposed to be electronically deposited the day after they had left. It took two months.

"Life was just totally, totally destroyed," she said.

And so they stayed, watching on a TV screen as their city fell apart.

They enrolled Travis in fourth grade at McPhee Elementary. Their daughter, Kiana, an adult, stayed for a while, then left.

"She was devastated. You have to get used to a place. She couldn't."

She went back home, but things were different, Shaeron said, and she came back to Lincoln last year.

Now she's attending the College of Hair Design, working part time at McDonald's and living in an apartment near her parents.

Earl graduated from Wesleyan with a degree in business administration, and he and his wife, Christina, moved to Lafayette, La.

They have two children. Earl, who taught at an alternative high school there, has started his own construction business.

In Lincoln, life went on.

Travis went to Park Middle School and is starting his sophomore year at Southeast.

The family got involved with a church here, Allon Chapel.

Earl was a courtesy driver for an auto dealership, then worked at a restaurant, but the poor economy meant cutbacks, and he's looking for work. Shaeron worked too, until her health prevented it.

They had been here two years when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It's gone now, but the chemotherapy damaged her bones. She has diabetes and high blood pressure.

"It's just one of those things in life," she said. "You go on."

They want Travis to finish school here, because the school system is so much better.

But they miss New Orleans, where their house was still standing after the hurricane but everything in it was destroyed.

"I miss home," Shaeron said. "You miss family."

You miss the easy pace of life there, how it revolves around family, where entertainment and church and the close-knit neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else makes its nickname seem so right.

The Big Easy - where Shaeron lived in the same uptown neighborhood her whole life and where she met a longshoreman named Earl as she was about to catch the ferry 37 years ago.

It's what makes the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina tough, watching it unfold again on the news.

"Every year at the anniversary, it's like opening up an old wound," Shaeron said.

She would like to go back someday, when Travis finishes school, but the prospect of another Katrina, another evacuation is too scary.

There's Lafayette, though, where the food is wonderful, two granddaughters are growing up and Shaeron's sister is two hours away.

Where the seafood, cleaned and ready for a pot of gumbo, is fresh.

Reach Margaret Reist at 402-473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.