Bradley Sumrall could see the old iron cross atop St. Augustine Church from the back yard of his house on Gov. Nicholls Street in Treme. The cross was already leaning a little before Hurricane Ida’s winds began churning the trees in the old neighborhood. By early Sunday afternoon, Ida had pushed the cross over completely. It hung precariously from its perch as the gray clouds swiftly passed above it.
“I was worried that it would come down,” Sumrall said. “And if it fell, I wanted to go get it.”
Hurricane or not, Sumrall said, the St. Augustine cross couldn’t just fall into the street. It needed to be protected. The church, which was built by the African-American residents of the Treme in 1841, is a landmark of immeasurable importance. It’s the anchor of the oldest Black parish in the country. Sumrall, a curator at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, wanted to be sure that if the cross fell, it would be safe until it could be put back in place.
The cross atop St. Augustine Church in Treme dangles from the church's belfry Monday, Aug. 30, 2021 after Hurricane Ida's punishing winds racked the region Sunday.
The cross wasn’t the only thing that Ida toppled. Sometime between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., the three giant pecan trees in Sumrall’s back yard succumbed to the wind and rain. The roots pulled out of the earth and the huge trunks toppled onto the double shotgun houses that adjoined the property, crushing the back wall of one and sending the brick chimney tumbling onto the roof.
Standing amid the broken brick fragments and fallen green pecans, Brison Colbert, 64 described the damage as a “domino effect,” as one thing crashed into another. When Colbert, a brick mason, heard the trees crash onto his house on Henriette Delille Street, his first fear was that his 93-year-old mother might be injured. She was asleep in the back room, right below the heavy tree trunk.
His mother Marion, Colbert said, had worked at Brennan’s Restaurant for 30 years. Happily, she was unhurt. “She laid there like nothing happened,” he said. “She’s good.”
Broderick Fairley said he was reclingin on his couch when the ceiling fell in during Hurricane Ida
Broderick Fairley, who lives in the other half of the double shotgun, said he was lying on the couch when the big trees descended. “I heard something rattling, and here come all the sheetrock from the ceiling,” he said. Fairley laughed as he pointed at the shards of debris that lay on the furniture and floor of his home.
“We got to have humor,” he said.
Fairley said he wasn’t going to clean up the place until the landlord saw what had happened. It might be tough facing the next few days without electricity. But he said he couldn’t leave town, because of his job. Fairley said he helps care for laboratory animals – mice, rats, pigs, and other creatures – at Tulane University. It wouldn’t be long before he had to return to his wards.
Fairley’s front door was marked with an authentically ominous plastic skull and crossbones, which symbolized his membership in the Original Northside Skull and Bones Gang, an age-old Carnival masking group. Fairley’s house is only two doors away from the Backstreet Cultural Museum, an institution devoted to New Orleans masking traditions.
Brison Colbert heard a rumble as a massive pecan tree crashed into his house.
Sumrall said the museum used to be a funeral home, with a building in the back for embalming. Not long ago, he said, the embalming building had been torn down. He said that the absence of that building may have been why the wind was able to find a clear path to push over the pecan trees that had stood for decades, possibly a century.
On Monday morning, the Treme streets were filled with the sound of scratching as neighbors raked the endless salad of oak leaves from the sidewalks. Everyone discussed the St. Augustine Church cross, marveling that it had hung on. Maybe the precarious cross would do some good.
“It’s kind of symbolic,” Sumrall said. “Maybe Rome will pay attention now.”
Contacted by phone in Birmingham, St. Augustine pastor the Rev. Emmanuel Mulenga said the church has been in the process of getting the cross fixed for some time. As far as he knows, it’s the original 1841 iron design, Mulenga said. It had leaned slightly ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Then Hurricane Zeta bent it more last October.
Since it’s so high in the air and surrounded by power lines, maintenance is tough. Ironically, just last week, the church had received $75,000 from the Archdiocese to repair the cross. Now, he fears, the cost may have to be re-estimated.
Correction: The source of funds to repair the cross was the Archdiocese, not FEMA, as originally stated.
