The Katrina brain drain
Tags: No TagsWill the brightest residents of New Orleans leave the city?
Like many displaced New Orleanians, Sheryl Smith and her husband, Clint, have some big decisions ahead of them. Sheryl Smith, a lifelong New Orleanian now in Houston, wanted to return home, but her house on St. Roch Avenue fared poorly in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina. Clint Smith, a lawyer for a small technology company in New Orleans, also hoped to return home. They miss the rituals of life in New Orleans: going to Mass, finding pickled meat in the red beans, shopping at neighborhood markets. "There are all those little things, those really uniquely New Orleans things," she said.
In the meantime, they feel their roots starting to sink into Houston. Sheryl Smith, an anesthesiologist, has received several job offers. Her three children, who attended Lusher and Ben Franklin schools in New Orleans, ended up at a prestigious international school in Houston, where they're mingling with children of oil executives and diplomats from all over the world. Her kids, all soccer players, were fascinated to discover that Homecoming at the international school revolves around a soccer game. And they've been quick to make friends: When Hurricane Rita threatened, a family from the school invited the Smiths to evacuate with them to their ranch in Texas' Hill Country…
Of course, what they don't tell you is that those "hills" are what people elsewhere refer to as "bumps in the road". The most elevation change that I'm aware of in that entire area of Texas is about 500'. Houston, like New Orleans and all the surrounding country, is flat. Unbelievable as it sounds, that doesn't bother some people for some strange reason. Pardon my digression.
