2005-09-04

Amid chaos, a rare voice of strength

NOLA.com: Times-Picayune Breaking News Weblog: "In front of the Convention Center on Saturday, amid a crowd of refugees weeping and trading stories of raped children and dead babies in freezers, an elderly woman in a yellow shirt lay near death, tremors coursing through her limbs.

Afew minutes later, she stopped shaking. And yet, in that hell, Anita Roach raised her voice to the heavens, belting out the gospel standards that had comforted her since childhood: through homelessness, through friendlessness, through the death of her son and through the flood that nearly killed her and her husband in their Lower 9th Ward home.

'When the storm
Of life is raging,
Stand by me, stand by me...'"

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