Couple separated by New Orleans flood reunited in Gary
Published: October 1, 2005
The water was waist-deep as city native Verdell Berry and his fiance, Norma Toups, began wading toward the Louisiana Superdome to escape Hurricane Katrina four weeks ago.
Then the storm sent water surging through the streets of downtown New Orleans, washing the rail-thin Toups down Canal Street and out of sight.
After enduring an at-times nightmarish odyssey, Berry and Toups are back together and looking to make Gary their home.
“I thought it was the last time I was going to see her,” said Berry, who was planning funeral arrangements with a local minister two weeks ago.
“I was just waiting to go back down to identify the body.”
“I’m just grateful to have him back,” said Toups, who is living with Berry at his father’s Marshalltown home.
After the rush of water swept Toups away from Berry, the 47-year-old fought the current for what she says were hours until a man and woman in a small boat spotted her and fished her out of the water.
The couple dropped Toups off at the city’s convention center, which was being used to house people displaced by the storm.
Berry, who made it to the Superdome by wading and swimming from lamp post to lamp post, was only a few miles away.
Berry spent four days at the Superdome, leaving to search for Toups in a boat he bought from a fellow evacuee for $20. He said he left when National Guard troops policing the Dome refused to let him take out the boat anymore.
The couple that saved Toups returned to the convention center with a bus ticket to Orlando, where she stayed with a friend.
“I never even got their names,” she said. “I was just a nervous wreck.”
After briefly moving to another camp in Arkansas, Berry made his way back to Gary, where he registered his name with the American Red Cross and listed Toups and her
18-year-old daughter as missing.
In Florida, Toups added Berry’s name to the missing persons list. On Sept. 10, the Red Cross matched the two and called Berry.
“The first thing he said was ‘get ye’ to Indiana,’ ” Toups said.
Toups believes her daughter, who did not live with her, is alive because she received a garbled phone message from the Red Cross.
Berry is looking for carpentry work in Gary, and the couple has no plans to return to New Orleans anytime soon.
Their duplex in Algiers on the west bank of New Orleans was badly damaged in the storm.
Toups, who grew up in New Orleans, said she isn’t looking forward to the Midwestern blizzards that will replace the threat of hurricanes.
“I just can’t handle the cold, cold weather,” she said.
The couple plan to have a wedding in Gary as soon as they find a house.
“I’m just glad it’s all over,” she said. “I don’t like to think about it.”
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