Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Postcard from an evening with Leah Chase

December 2006

“No one person is your hero. You take a little something from all of them.” said New Orleans chef Leah Chase last night about the civil rights icons she knew and fed, to a crowded ballroom of Timberland employees holding their annual sales conference a few blocks from the French Quarter.

The city continues to struggle and to improve. Slowly. Painstakingly. Inexorably. 106 of 126 public schools were severely damaged and today 27,000 students are back where there were once 62,000. Orleans parish lost 50% of its health professionals, and only 3 hospitals are open where there were once 13. Of $7.4 billion allocated for homeowners to rebuild, some local activists argue that only $3 million has actually flowed through. There is more finger pointing and political division than there was in the days right after the storm. Call it human nature.

You don’t see such finger pointing from Leah Chase who began working at Dooky Chase Restaurant in 1946 and now more than 16 months since Katrina hopes to re-open it on January 6 which will be her 84th birthday. With her golden complexion, white hair and dangling earrings that sparkle under the stage lights, there is something of the regal lioness about her. She spoke tonight following a video taped speech from civil rights pioneer and Georgia Congressman John Lewis.

“I go back such a long ways with John Lewis,” she sighed. “It almost moved me to tears to hear him speak. My job in that civil rights program was to feed people and send them on their way. John Lewis. Thurgood Marshall. James Baldwin. You always picked up a little good from each of them. There was always something good to take away.

“People ask me: Why don’t you quit? Well, I’m not so Christian as I pretend to be. I’m chicken. I’m afraid of dying and if you quit you die. And I can’t afford to die. I owe too many people. My payback is to rebuild the community, to uplift people, to help every man feel his worth.

“People say the federal government didn’t help us, but it’s not that. This was just overwhelming. The American people though have been unbelievable. Just your being here tonight gives us a lift and a push.”

Given her age and the state of the neighborhood where her restaurant once stood, the odds seem stacked against Leah Chase. But given her talent and reputation, her commitment to re-open has taken on larger symbolic significance than the return of one restaurant or one business.

She embodies the spirit of the old New Orleans. The new New Orleans will need it.

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