NEW ORLEANS – They stood on the interstate bridge and watched dark waters rise.
Perhaps a half-mile away, behind a lottery billboard, stood the family home, its light-blue siding barely visible above the floods.
Three generations of McCrays stitched together identities here in the Upper Ninth Ward.
They were New Orleans' black middle class – ascending from humble histories in housing projects with names like Desire and St. Bernard.
But on that Monday afternoon, the sun re-emerging behind them, they knew they wouldn't live here again. Not at 2707 Higgins Blvd.
They were embarking on a new search for home, joining one of the largest exoduses in the nation's history. Over six weeks, it would take them hundreds of miles – through school systems, churches, job searches and a funeral.
It would lead them into the North Texas home of a rich white mother of four, into a suburban subdivision and through countless beds and air mattresses.
And in time, it would carry them full circle, flirting anew with the city they and others vowed never to live in again.
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On Tuesday, Aug. 30, the situation deteriorating and panic spreading, the McCray family fled the French Quarter hotel where they rode out Hurricane Katrina.
At the Hotel Monteleone, workers later would find last wills and testaments, scribbled hurriedly by desperate evacuees.
The McCrays left their luggage and drove west, 11 packed in a small black sedan.
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Photos: The McCray family
In Jennings, La., 170 miles away, they regrouped in another hotel as the family grew to 20. Patriarch James McCray – a strong-willed, quiet, emotionally self-conscious man – was a warehouse manager for a newspaper. Linda McCray, his gregarious wife of 34 years, worked at a bank.
The two lived in the Ninth Ward home with their 20-year-old son, Jimmy McCray, his fiancee and the young couple's two daughters. Before the flood, Jimmy remembered to move his big-screen television upstairs but forgot his wedding ring.
James and Linda's three daughters, and their families, completed the group. There was Danielle Robinson with her husband, Keith Robinson, and their children, 13-year-old Jasmine Davis and 6-month-old Keira Robinson, nicknamed "Bubbles."
The Robinson family had an apartment in New Orleans' West Bank next to Danielle's sister, Trinell McCray, her three children and longtime boyfriend Josh Landry, a longshoreman.
James and Linda's oldest daughter, Katrina, traveled with her husband, Wallace Forte, who worked in waste management, and their three children.
Inside a hotel room, they all gathered as James and Linda delivered a simple message:
The family was going to travel together and stay together until the time came to construct new lives apart. They had cars and credit cards and employment checks still coming in – enough to make it for a while.
They would go to Dallas.
"It's going to be tough, but this is going to make us stronger," Linda said.
"We just have to be patient."
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In University Park, Sue Sandford lives in a place that is the Ninth Ward's polar opposite.
The McCrays' ZIP code is more than 87 percent black with a median household income of $30,627. Households in Sue's ZIP code, more than 97 percent white, make $98,838.
Sue, a divorced mother, wanted her four children to know a world different from their own. On a Thursday night, they traveled to Dallas' Reunion Arena to see the human toll of a hurricane.
Sue's 4-year-old daughter, Emma, wore a ballerina outfit and had her hair in a bun, passing out deodorant and giving children hugs.
The next day, Sue met Keith in a makeshift donation center at the shelter. The McCrays had arrived in Dallas before dawn, coming to Reunion to register for assistance.
Sue offered her home.
The McCrays, exhausted, accepted.
"I live in a 99.9 percent white affluent community," Sue warned them. "People will look at you funny, not because you're black but because you don't belong in my house. It's not prejudice. It's protection."
James, for one, couldn't understand why a single white woman would take in a black family of 20.
But back at the house, Sue told him how her grandmother once took in a recovering black heroin addict.
And over the fireplace hung a photo of two African women, courtesy of her mother, a globetrotting photographer.
James was comforted but still felt somehow out of place. It wasn't as much about race as belonging. It was about knowing how to get to Wal-Mart, where to find a job and which church to attend.
"Sometimes, when I'm walking down the street and people are looking at me, I just don't feel comfortable," James said. "I just don't fit in right now."
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Within days, the two families from radically different backgrounds would form a lasting bond. Among myriad social experiments the hurricane spawned, this was one that worked.
Linda prepared slow-cooked barbecue ribs, potato salad, peach cobbler – a spread worthy of a family reunion. Sue's neighbors brought peanut butter cookies, gift cards, checks and words of encouragement.
"It broke down racial barriers, even for me," said daughter Danielle, the first in her family to graduate from college. "I would have never thought in a million years that somebody white would do something like this."
Neighborhood kids and the two families frolicked in the backyard pool. For Sue, who quotes Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. in the same breath, it was a revelatory moment.
"In that little slice of my life, it's probably the happiest I've ever been," Sue said.
Trinell's son, Shawn, and Sue's son, Josh, quickly forged a friendship.
Emma, meanwhile, attached herself to one of the McCray toddlers. In a bathtub one night, Sue implored her daughter to share toys with her guest.
"Mommy, she's not a guest; she's family," the 4-year-old replied.
By the end of their first week in University Park, most members of the McCray family said they would stay in Dallas. There was nothing left in New Orleans, and Dallas impressed them with kind people, big houses and jobs.
Some said there was even a kind of freedom in the idea of charting new lives.
On Sept. 13, two weeks after coming to North Texas, the family signed a six-month lease for a home in a pristine suburban subdivision in McKinney. The McCrays moved in the same day – everyone except Katrina and her family, who moved to Houston.
That night in McKinney, James and others removed the bright pink wristbands they received at the shelter. Only Keith left his on.
"I'll take it off after I get a job and life gets back to normal," he said. "It's a reminder."
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"After the first day in your home, I knew God wanted us to meet one of his angels on earth. I've been thinking everyday of what I could do for you to show our appreciation for your unimaginable generosity of turning your home over to twenty strangers but nothing seems to be good enough ...
For this reason, I have changed my mind, and I will live in Dallas, Tx."
–Letter from James to Sue, dated Sept. 9.
James changed before his wife's eyes.
"We're all shocked," Linda said. "I think he's just more open. It's just the generosity of people. He'd never had that."
Before the storm, James would work, watch television, play golf, collect brand-name clothes and say very little.
He worked hard to enter the middle class after growing up in the St. Bernard projects. As a 9-year old, he caddied at the local golf course.
In high school, he cleaned up after Hurricane Betsy and mopped chicken blood from a factory floor.
In 1984, he and Linda bought their home in the Upper Ninth Ward. Over time, he became set in his ways.
"He would walk 10 miles around someone to avoid talking to them," Linda said.
But after the storm, James began opening up. He even cried on occasion.
In University Park, he played cards for the first time since his best friend died at a card table five years ago.
He started wearing blue jeans and began to rethink his middle-class materialism.
"It's going to change me and the way I look at life," James said one day in McKinney.
"We had too many clothes, but everything's gone now. [After the storm], I was down to two pairs of shorts, five shirts and one pair of tennis shoes."
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The hurricane shook lives like a child shaking a snow globe. Eventually, though, gravity has its way. Things fall back to where they came.
"Mama, what time we leavin'?"
It was 2:22 a.m. in McKinney, and Jimmy was impatient. After two weeks in their new home, the family decided to briefly return to New Orleans.
The Ninth Ward hadn't reopened, but they wanted to pick up their cars, survey the damage and salvage whatever they could.
"Ma, are we going to leave at 3 or what?" Jimmy asked at 2:37.
They left before dawn, a caravan on a pilgrimage home. Afterbalking at the idea, James joined the group of eight.
Across the Mississippi-Louisiana state line, they passed military convoys and tanker trucks labeled "drinking water."
Farther south, about 40 miles from New Orleans at St. John the Baptist Parish, the waters of Lake Pontchartrain – placid and shimmering – bore no clue of the destruction ahead.
The family reached the city midday.
Their first stop was the Days Inn parking lot to pick up cars and Jimmy's motorcycle. Outside was a newspaper stand. The most recent issue: Aug. 27.
They pushed on, crossing streets with names like Elysian Fields and Music and Arts, to the east bank of the river and the Upper Ninth Ward, the place they watched fill with water just a month before.
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It was like entering a ransacked shipwreck.
The water had risen to within 6 inches of the ceiling.
Newly bought furniture was warped and bloated. Paint was stripped from walls and hung from the ceiling.
Mosquitoes and flies buzzed around, and a thin layer of sludge coated the floor. The stomach-turning smell of decay assaulted the senses.
"I didn't expect this. Not like this," James said, smiling in disbelief.
Home after home in their neighborhood had been laid low, the once vibrant subdivision turned into a ghost town.
The McCrays, however, found a bit of good fortune upstairs; it was largely untouched by the storm.
They collected family photos, Linda's sewing machine and Jimmy's big-screen television.
Downstairs, Keith found Jimmy's wedding ring in a bedroom.
It was more than they expected to salvage, but they knew their home was a loss.
Someone will have to bulldoze the place. With any luck, they'll get more than $100,000 in insurance money and build anew somewhere else.
The next day, back at the home, neighbor Lawrence Raymond arrived to collect salvageable belongings. The electrician vowed never to return to the city.
"Well, neighbor, I don't know when I'll see you again," he told James.
"But good luck."
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Just weeks after he pledged to stay in North Texas, James was thinking about moving back to New Orleans.
He spoke with his boss and tentatively committed to returning to the warehouse at the Times-Picayune once it's up and running. He and others in the family interviewed for jobs in Dallas, but they didn't want to take a pay cut.
"We'll all end up back in New Orleans eventually," James said while still in the city.
He'll find somewhere to live, with or without Linda for a time. Linda still wants to live in North Texas. But she misses her church. It's the main reason she would move back.
The McCray family, once unified in New Orleans, appears to be ready to move in separate directions.
Everyone seems to know it's for the best.
"Everybody's got different attitudes, and we all clash," James said. "Everybody wants control of the situation.
"They're my children, but we can't live together. Not in my house. Not for a long time, at least."
Trinell's boyfriend, Josh, plans to return to work as a longshoreman in New Orleans.
"Things change," James explained. "I guess your job will always determine where you live."
Danielle and Keith remained committed to staying in McKinney, mainly because of the school system. Their daughter, Jasmine, has been attending a local middle school and made the volleyball team.
The family still hasn't gotten a 2005 calendar. Without a calendar or jobs, they get confused about dates. School, at least, has provided a bit of a routine.
"Now I have closure," Danielle said after seeing her parents' house. "I was able to see New Orleans for what it is now, and I know what it was."
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James and Linda still had closure to find.
For years, Dianne Wilson was Linda's best friend in the city. Her husband, Matt, was James' friend since he was 13.
Ms. Wilson, who worked for an assisted-living group home, fled the city with her patients when the hurricane hit, relocating to Baton Rouge.
But she had a heart condition and wasn't able to see a doctor after waiting 12 hours at a hospital.
Two days before the McCrays left for New Orleans, Ms. Wilson, 54, didn't wake up when her alarm clock rang. She died in her sleep.
In New Orleans, Linda and James learned of funeral arrangements and headed to Amite, La., for a wake.
"We lost our house. Now I lost my wife," Mr. Wilson said inside the funeral home. "This was too much stress. She couldn't handle it."
Linda, who had remembered to pack a black dress before leaving McKinney, broke down in tears.
James wrung his hands.
Everybody here had stories of grief, loss and recovery. For many, it was the first time they'd seen each other since the storm.
"There are people scattered all over the country right now," church elder Raymond Harrell said at the funeral the next afternoon. "We thought we had homes, but they are earthly homes. We need to have our souls anchored in the Lord."
After the service, at the grave site, the warm air filled with the sound of cicadas, sobs and crickets.
A familiar refrain somehow seemed more prescient now.
Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.
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The McCray family drove to McKinney the next day. Their search for home continues.
Last Sunday, six of the original group of 20 returned to New Orleans to report for work and look for housing.
Among them were James, Jimmy, Keith, Danielle, Trinell and Josh.
Trinell quickly resigned from her job and returned to McKinney. Others may follow. Nobody knows definitively where they'll settle.
Linda, for one, holds out hope the entire family will relocate near Dallas. She interviewed for a job as a personal banker at a North Texas bank on Thursday.
"We're all going to be in the same area [near Dallas]," she said. "Guaranteed."
Sue Sandford remains close with the family. She said the experience has changed her perceptions of Dallas, changed her children and changed her neighborhood.
"The McCrays, unbeknown to them, broke down a lot of barriers on this block," she said. "It made people think more than anything."
