Katrina's Lives Lost:	Baham, Christina 1934-2005
			Baham, Warren 1919-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A March 2006
Source:			Times Picayune 

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Warren and Christina Baham were old-school New Orleanians, both of them
born and reared in the 7th Ward, both church-going, duty-bound, stand-up
citizens.

In their prime, before retirement and some degree of disability, he made
his living as a mail carrier and she was a secretary in the sociology
department at the University of New Orleans. He was a graduate of the
Straight Business School; she went to Delgado.

They lived together in Pontchartrain Park, in a three-bedroom house with
curtains that changed with the seasons and a living room full of fancy
furniture fitted out with plastic covers. They celebrated their
anniversaries at Piccadilly Cafeteria.

Warren Baham was "a noble man, a fine man, a Christian man," said Mildred
Mossy, Warren's sister. "He helped people. He followed the rules. He
respected the rules of this country. He didn't take shortcuts. He paid his
bills, he paid his taxes. And he would always instruct young people to do
right.

"Christina, she was my girlfriend. My brother married my girlfriend. She
had a beautiful personality, a beautiful character. She was smart, good,
kind, a wonderful sister-in-law."

To Licia Moody, Christina was also an aunt. But, Moody said, she was the
kind of aunt who was more like a second mother -- a lifelong pal who got
her out of scrapes, took her side and always had a hearty laugh ready when
her niece felt playful.

"As I got older," Moody said, "my mother, my aunt and I would go on little
Saturday outings. We'd go to a shopping center -- Lakeside, usually, or
Carrollton -- and from there we'd go to Schwegmann's. And we'd go to lunch,
too -- the Red Lobster or a Chinese restaurant or sometimes we just ate in
the mall."

In retirement, the Bahams indulged in their favorite pastimes. For
Christina, it was soap operas.

"That was her thing: television," Moody said. "She had a big-screen TV in
her living room and if she couldn't watch her soap operas, she recorded
them."

Warren took up painting -- religious scenes, mostly, that he would render
on plaster tiles and hang in the garage.

"My brother was an artist," Mossy said. "He made beautiful art -- Moses and
Elijah and beautiful pictures of Christ.

"On his picture window, he had two praying hands. He made shutters for his
windows and every one of them had something painted on them. You'd go in
the garage and you'd see them all over. Oh, Lord have mercy, my brother was
a smart man."

When Christina grew ill, her husband cared for her conscientiously, the way
he did everything.

"He waited on her hand and foot," Moody said. "He washed her feet, he put
her stockings on, he'd fix her breakfast, fix her lunch, make the
groceries."

Moody talked to her aunt about 2 in the afternoon on the Sunday before
Katrina and Mossy talked to her brother about an hour later. They made one
last effort to persuade the Bahams to evacuate before the storm. But their
efforts were in vain.

It isn't clear when exactly, but Warren and Christina Baham died in
Pontchartrain Park -- she inside the house, he just outside, probably in an
effort to find help.

"When they first let us back into the city, we went to the house," Moody
said. "We had to figure out what the symbols meant. We finally figured it
out: 1D -- one dead."

But in fact, it was two. Two upstanding citizens of New Orleans, as Mildred
Mossy would say.

"I lost something, baby. I lost the best thing I had," she said, with a
touch of anger in her voice. "And nobody can give it back to me."