Deja Vu All Over Again

As Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes.
One of those people is Lattimore Brown. Repeated phone calls to the hotel that FEMA has placed him in down in Biloxi yesterday went unanswered. The desk manager told me that everyone in the hotel was being evacuated by 2 pm.
When Katrina hit, Lattimore's van, on which he only had one more payment, had been 'locked down' (immobilized by the Repo Men) because the payment was late. As we've mentioned before, he gets his VA check on the first of the month, and was going to make the payment on September 1st. Katrina hit on August 29th. Unable to drive, he was forced to send his wife on a bus trip from which she would never return. The van was washed away by the storm. Insurance didn't cover that kind of catastrophic loss. It was gone.


When I spoke with him last week, he told me that they had come and locked down the van once more, and that he was waiting until September 1st so he could afford to pay the note and get his car back... only he was forced to evacuate yesterday, August 31st. Faced once again with the same impossible situation, did he decide to get on the bus - the same bus that took his wife away for the last time - or try and weather the storm somewhere on the streets of Biloxi?
I honestly don't know. As of this writing, there is already water running down those streets, as the angry Gulf pounds away at that narrow strip of beach...
God bless you Lattimore Brown, wherever you are.
3 Comments:
Keep us up to date when you know something, Red. Lattimore's story is incredible...thanks for sharing.
This just infuriates and deeply saddens me. Discovered Lattimore Brown through you and Funky16Corners and he is a treasure that should be honored. Just bought Please, Please Please @amazonmp3 in hopes in some small way it will help him and plan to write a post to promote him for others to buy(although I'm sure his cut from each sale is most likely paltry). Thanks Red for keeping us posted.
I was thinking about him when the news was breaking about the hurricane. I concur with your sentiment here and I look forward to an update should you succeed in hearing from him.
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