ABC’s Robin Roberts retraces her post-Hurricane Katrina journey back to hometown
Revisiting the time she broke down on “Good Morning America” while covering Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of her hometown Pass Christian, Mississippi, Robin Roberts said she feared losing her job.
Only three months after she was named a host of the ABC News show with industry vets Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, Roberts had played it straight on the Gulf Coast. That’s what reporters do: they keep a lid on emotions to get the work done. Then Gibson asked, during a live shot, if Roberts had determined that her mother and other family members were safe.
So much for professional reserve.
“It’s one thing if you shed a tear, but I was boo-hooing,” Roberts said. “I was delighted that in the end people were touched by that in a way that I wasn’t expecting, that it was authenticity. That was proof that they just want you to be real in the moment.”
That clip of a much younger Roberts — still a “Good Morning America” host — is replayed on her ABC News special looking back at Katrina after 20 years. It airs Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern and is streamed on Disney+ and Hulu starting the next day.
Roberts, 64, has been back in the region more times than she can count since then, both to report and visit family. Her mother, Lucimarian, died in 2012 at age 88. Her sister Sally-Ann, a longtime news anchor in New Orleans, has retired.
“I still can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” she said. “Two decades. Going through the old footage was a little PTSD. You kind of blocked some of that out.”
In the special, Roberts retraces the ride she took from New Orleans to Pass Christian 20 years ago. There are fewer “staircases to nowhere” along the way, evidence of destroyed homes, each time she’s back. But remnants from Katrina are still there.
Retracing her steps back to hometown
She tours Pass Christian with the longtime former mayor, Chipper McDermott. They visit her rebuilt high school — spotting the picture of Roberts on display — and the new version of a favorite family restaurant that had been washed away.
McDermott shows new homes with living areas built 20 feet in the air to protect against future storm surges. “A lot of people say, ‘why would you live in a place where you have to live on stilts?’” Roberts said. “It’s home. Pick anywhere in the world where Mother Nature can’t have the upper hand at some point. But home is home.”
Roberts wanted to pay tribute both to people who stayed in the area and rebuilt, and people who came to the Gulf in the storm’s immediate aftermath to help.
“It took a lot of strength to raise our hands and say we need help,” she said. “It’s very hard for Southerners to do that. We like to do it on our own. We did a lot on our own, but we got a lot of help. And we’re very appreciative of that help.”
The special doesn’t ignore tough issues, like economic inequality in the pace of rebuilding. Some affordable housing was replaced by hotels and casinos. One effective segment visits a New Orleans photographer, Jeremy Tauriac, and musician, Jasmine Batiste, who were children when rescued from Katrina and talked about the difficulties rebuilding their lives.
There’s music, too. What would a visit to New Orleans be without it? Roberts talks with Harry Connick Jr., Trombone Shorty and Branford Marsalis.
“It is different, in some ways, of course,” Roberts said. “Nothing stays the same, especially after something like that. But the heart and soul of what New Orleans is? It didn’t touch that.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
By DAVID BAUDER
AP Media Writer
