"We wanted to create a haven of normality where people could escape what's going on outside," says Martin Chambers, who owns and runs the café with his wife, Alicein. "It's like a ray of hope. One customer came in, looked around and said: 'I think everything's going to be OK'."
[another example: how bill hewlett donated money to repair the stanford arch first after the 89 earthquake]
Café leads way back to normality for Bay St Louis
By Andrew Ward in Atlanta
Published: August 26 2006 03:00 | Last updated: August 26 2006 03:00
If a list were made of the most urgent priorities facing Bay St Louis, Mississippi, a year after it was battered by Hurricane Katrina, a coffee shop offering $3.75 café lattes and free wireless internet access would not feature prominently.
But two weeks after opening, the Mockingbird Café is starting to look like the best thing to happen to the town since the storm.
For the regulars who have already discovered it, fresh coffee and muffins are only part of the appeal. At least as important is the focal point it has created for a community recovering from disaster.
This week, the café, a southern-style, whitewashed wooden building that survived both the civil war and Katrina, was buzzing. Returning evacuees shared stories and teary embraces; an architect pored over rebuilding plans on her laptop computer; local teenagers huddled around a table sipping milkshakes.
"We wanted to create a haven of normality where people could escape what's going on outside," says Martin Chambers, who owns and runs the café with his wife, Alicein. "It's like a ray of hope. One customer came in, looked around and said: 'I think everything's going to be OK'."
As the first anniversary of Katrina approaches on Tuesday, the story of how the Chambers survived the loss of almost all their possessions and investments to return and start afresh is emblematic of thousands of similar experiences up and down the US Gulf coast.
In a region where family roots run deep and strong southern accents are almost universal, Mr Chambers, born in Northern Ireland, is a curiosity. He came to New York to celebrate St Patrick's Day 10 years ago and never returned. New Orleans was his next stop and it was there that he married Alicein, who owned a designer clock-making business there.
With Alicein pregnant, the couple moved last year to Bay St Louis, the town where she grew up. Combining his skills as a bricklayer with her flair for design, they set up a business buying old properties to restore. By the time Katrina struck, they owned six houses. All but two were destroyed, with $250,000 of stock at the clock business.
Only a fraction of their losses were covered by insurance. But as the storm rolled in, the biggest concern was the welfare of Ms Chambers and their unborn child. They evacuated to an inland motel but when flying fence posts pierced its flimsy walls they realised they needed to flee further.
Safety was found 250 miles north-east in Monroeville, Alabama, birthplace of Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Their stay there would later inspire not only the name of the coffee shop but also the second name of their baby son, Atticus, after the hero in Ms Lee's novel.
The day after Katrina, a National Guardsman on the Mississippi border told Mr Chambers: "Bay St Louis is gone." That turned out to be an exaggeration, but only just. Much of the town had been devastated by the 30ft storm surge, including many of the art galleries, craft shops and restaurants for which it was known.
An exception was a 143-year-old building on South Second Street that sustained only minor damage. The Chambers used their savings and insurance payout to buy it and make it a cafe, with a local bank making up the shortfall.
It was the first new business to open in Bay St Louis since Katrina. "We're confident it is going to pay off," says Mr Chambers. "This place was booming before the storm and there's no reason it can't do so again."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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