If I close my eyes I can see the grounds manicured immaculately with flowers blooming. I can see the students, boys from fifth grade through high school bustling about this campus. I can see Br. Robert Hampton, the Headmaster and retired Marine, running the place like a tight ship with education foremost in mind.
This area is fenced off and off limits to the 500 students and faculty who are attending classes in portable classrooms set up in the parking lot.
And, I can hear the seniors standing in front of this building singing their alma mater "Holy Cross, we hail thee...."
I can see my father when last he visited the school in 1974 at the age of 82, climbing the stairs to the third floor and breathing heavily with emphysema, so he could show the Holy Cross Brothers and his three grandsons where his room and bed and desk had been in this building when he was a boarder there in the early 1900's. He banged on the steam radiator with his pen and said "it still sounds the same."
But, only if I close my eyes.
Those are the memories that Katrina and her counterparts the Corps of Engineers and the EPA cannot take away.