Separated in evacuation, mother, boy are reunited
Published: September 11, 2005
For a little more than a week, Brandy Johnson had no idea where her 1-year-old son was.
The boy had gone with her mother, who fled their New Orleans home two days before Hurricane Katrina struck. Johnson and her brother stayed behind, and the house flooded. Rescuers came, but the siblings were separated.
Johnson, 18, tried repeatedly to call her mother as she made her way to San Diego. As the days went on with no contact, Johnson said she grew more worried, sleeping less and crying more.
At 4 a.m. Tuesday, she got a call from the Red Cross saying her son, Moses, had been found. As soon as she secured money for a ticket, she booked a flight and left Friday to get her son.
An exhausted and relieved Johnson returned to San Diego yesterday with Moses, greeted by the boy’s father and family.
As he took his son in his arms, Moses Lawson kissed the boy and told him a few times, “You don’t even know what’s going on.”
The emotional family reunion at Lindbergh Field is one of many stories of New Orleans evacuees, who left everything behind and are slowly trying to get their lives in order. Some have made their way to San Diego with hopes of starting over.
Johnson made it to Lawson’s Jefferson Parish home and fled three days after the hurricane. The two, along with some family and friends, crammed into a on-its-last-mile van and drove to a family friend’s home in El Paso, Texas.
They were fed and given bus fare for the 12-hour trip to Los Angeles. Lawson’s older brother lives in San Diego and said they could stay with him and his wife and three children.
On her first night in San Diego, Johnson cried.
“I didn’t want to leave (New Orleans),” she said. “It took a lot for them to make me leave.”
Johnson learned that her mother had suffered a slight heart attack after she had evacuated and was in San Antonio, Texas. Johnson had lost track of her son, who was with her sister. The sister had taken the child to Plackman, La.
Red Cross officials called Lawson and Johnson several times, always with the wrong child.
“I was getting worried, but I knew deep in my heart he’d be all right,” Lawson said.
At the same time, the 20-year-old was calling his family, still in Louisiana. His 7-month-old son, also named Moses, was with a relative in Thibodeaux.
“He’s all right,” Lawson said.
Johnson said she has barely slept in the last week and has tried to keep busy by cleaning the cramped three-bedroom house where Lawson’s brother, Todd Moore, lives.
“I was worried, thinking all kinds of stuff,” she said.
When her son was found with her aunt at a shelter in Plackman, Johnson booked her first airplane trip. A San Diego woman paid for the ticket.
“I thought he wasn’t going to know me,” Johnson said. “But he ran right up to me. He really did miss me.”
Johnson and Lawson are now in contact with most of their family still in Louisiana. However, Johnson’s brother has not been found.
The two plan to stay in San Diego, knowing that most everything they owned is lost. They met with Red Cross officials, who gave them vouchers to stay in a hotel for two weeks and a debit card to buy necessities.
They want to begin building their new lives, but first are just happy to be spending time with their son.
“It had been so long,” Johnson said. “I had never been away from my baby for more than two days.”
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