Husband And Wife Wake Up In The Water
Submitted:		N.O.V.A. December 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 12-04-2005

**********************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
**********************************************


"It's funny, I never expected the same water I spent so many fun times
fishing and crabbing in all my life would one day up and turn on me."

It's that water, not the wind, that haunts Henry Winter, 88, a lifelong
resident of North Rampart Street.

"It wasn't Katrina that drove us out, it was the mean, unforgiving water
that woke me out of my bed that morning," he said.

When the levees broke and the water began to rise, there wasn't even time
for him and his wife, Lois, 87, to get dressed, Winter said.

"I told my wife, 'Honey, I'm stepping in water,' and it was just coming so
fast. All we could do was stand on some recycling bins that'd tipped over,"
said Winter, who now lives in Seattle. "There we stood, me holding onto her
little waist as tight as I could in nothing but my sleeping clothes and her
in her slip."

Clinging to his screen door, Winter caught the attention of a neighbor who
somehow signaled for help to a group of police officers making rescues. The
warm water continued to rise and Winter watched his sofa float away and his
two cats leap onto his mattress. The sight of their cats fighting for their
lives heightened his wife's pleas for help.

"Never did I think it was the end. I knew I couldn't swim because I got a
bad leg and all, but I didn't ever think of death," Winter said. "Now my
wife, she wasn't happy at all. She kept falling off the bin and swallowing a
mouth full of water.

"Just as she went to screaming and yelling something fierce, those men came
into our house and they saved us. I'll never forget it. It was the last time
I saw my home."

Winter said he knows he certainly came close to his end.

"God bless them, bless them for going into that water to save folks like me
and my wife," Winter said. "Every day I am thankful that my life was spared.
Those men were a godsend to me and my wife."

He said every day he says a blessing for the police officers and Times-
Picayune photographer Alex Brandon, who were in the boat that carried them
to land. Today, Winter said, he can look back and be grateful for his life,
but there isn't a day that passes that he doesn't miss or mourn for the
memories that were lost when the levees broke.

"This house, this block, the whole neighborhood was my entire world, my
whole life," Winter said. "I was born just around the corner from my house I
was living in, and I'll tell you the truth: Before Katrina I expected to
live out the rest of my life right there in that house."