Though out of town when it hit, New Orleans residents Molly Moran Bryant ’96 and Dr. Dave Bryant ’95 experienced the severe personal impact of Hurricane Katrina. Dave, a physician, talked his way onto a supply helicopter that took him back into New Orleans after the storm.  “I did my emergency medicine residency at Charity Hospital and, on a good day, it was a controlled disaster, so I felt prepared for what I did,” he explains. He worked at an aid station in the Superdome, caring for close to 20,000 people, even delivering a baby by flashlight. The threat of riots eventually forced a helicopter evacuation of the medical team from the Superdome. After the evacuation, Dave went back work at Charity Hospital in Houma, La.

While Dave was in New Orleans, Molly stayed in Dallas with her family. A third-grade teacher at the all-girls Academy of Sacred Heart in New Orleans, she spent her first two weeks in Dallas serving as a liaison between schools there and Sacred Heart families. Most of her students, though, had evacuated to Houston after the storm. “I just wanted for the girls to return to a schedule,” she says. “We explored so many options. Sacred Heart asked me to go to Houston and teach since 125 students moved there.” Molly lived with the parents of her sister-in-law (Suzanne Ramsey Moran ’93), Russell ’66 and Ann Carter Ramsey ’67. “What was most amazing was that some children lost everything and some had very little loss. The kids who adjusted well depended on how their families dealt with everything, not on how much they lost. I learned more from the eight and nine year olds than they probably learned from me,” Molly notes.

Since the hurricane, the Bryants have moved to Texas. Dave says, “It was a difficult decision, especially after we evacuated the patients from my hospital during Hurricane Rita. I loved working for the Charity system, treating people that no one else wants to help.  But, our house was not livable for quite a while because of a natural gas line break underneath it. The months after the storms were difficult,” he says. “Molly taught in Houston while I worked in New Orleans. We saw each other maybe twice a month. We were blessed, though. We have a lot of friends who lost everything.”  Dave now works in the emergency department at Methodist Dallas Medical Center and Molly is a long-term substitute at the Episcopal School of Dallas. Through everything, they have taken lessons from Hurricane Katrina. Dave explains, “You have to be self-reliant. You can’t wait on others to take of things that need to be done.” And, Molly offers, “We witnessed a whole lot of miracles. Families took care of families. I feel blessed to see that side of humanity.”