Amid hurricane ruins, resilience and hope

When he knocked, no one came. So he stopped for a second and considered braving the surge yet again.

"He didn't want to bust the door. Now that is what I call character," says Bart Brooks, whose family finally saw Mr. Mollere from the window and let him in.

Indeed, acts of kindness have been plentiful. Mr. Guenard, who himself survived hurricane Camille 35 years ago, has been driving around Waveland with ice chests, gas, and food packed into a U-Haul. And some of the compassionate deeds he's witnessed have brought him to tears: He saw one man who lost everything wandering the streets with a wheelbarrow to care for abandoned pets.

But there is a dark underbelly in the aftermath of Katrina. A curfew is in effect in Waveland after nightfall. Officers have been working around the clock, says Brent Anderson, an investigator with the Waveland Police Department, to catch looters.

Residents are also arming themselves. "Everybody has a gun," says Mary Brooks, Bart's wife. "These are some of the most peaceful, God-loving people around, but people are desperate. Most people have nothing left."

Waveland's town center, for example, is unrecognizable. Only a mural of a beach scene stands where City Hall once was.

Still, they have their humor. "Brian, you need anything?" yelled an officer from the sheriff's department, as Mollere set up a tarp to keep the sun from where he and a neighbor now call home. "You have a million dollars?" Mollere asked. "Tell everyone in the US to send me a dollar."

Visitors continued to stream by his encampment throughout the day. Each time, he offered a cold beverage or something to eat from his ice chest.

It's a typical gesture. At the Brooks household, a yellow home with a traditional Southern porch and a huge front lawn where Mollere ended up, Judi Brooks offers lemonade to visitors, even though mud has covered most of the house. She also rushes to show photos of her son Bart's wedding. "It's the Southern way," says Mollere.

For now, the company keeps his mind off things. He lost his mother in this storm and knows that soon he will grieve when the shock dissipates. "See how everyone pulls together?" he says. "Everyone lost something, or someone, or everything," he says.

Normalcy will not come soon. Many residents, like the Janssens, are moving away until they can rebuild. Some might never return.

But residents hope they do. Eric Stock and Jane Eisenhardt didn't know what they'd be driving back to, but no matter how bad it was, they wanted to face it. With the same kind of washable paint used to write "Just Married" on the back of newlyweds' cars, they wrote on their truck: "Waveland, MS :) Going home!"

And now that they're back? Says Ms. Eisenhardt: "It's good to be home."

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