On the morning I met Norman Marshall, he was laughing about how a woman he met stole his wallet and cell phone the night before.
"Years ago, when I was drinking, I'd be mad," he told me as we sat in his pine-scented apartment off of Waters Avenue. He was barely able to mutter a sentence without a hearty chuckle. "I'd be mad at the world."
I visited the 60-year-old former "Nawlins" resident to talk about his experiences during Hurricane Katrina, which slammed New Orleans two years ago this week. But by the time Katrina came along, I learned, Marshall had already weathered more than his share of fierce storms.
"The more I explain to people about my life, it doesn't hurt as much as it used to," he says in a rare moment of somberness. "Why do I keep going? So I can tell somebody else."
Norman Marshall was born in the small town of Port Gibson, Miss., but moved to the working-class Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans when he was 4 years old. Growing up, he did what other neighborhood boys did: played sports and chased girls. (Marshall claims one of his first girlfriends was Antoinette Domino, daughter of rock and R&B great Fats Domino.) Yet Marshall didn't feel like his the rest of the kids.
"My parents would tell me go out and have fun, but I didn't have fun," he says. "They didn't listen."
At 14, Marshall attempted suicide for the first time. Doctors put him on Thorazine, but it wasn't until he was in his 50s that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
When he turned 18, the U.S. Army drafted Marshall and shipped him to Vietnam as a radio field operator. He had never even smoked a cigarette before entering the army, but now he began to drink and use drugs heavily. In some ways, drug abuse was a way to cope with the realities of war.
During his two tours, Marshall was shot in the leg and the stomach.
"The physical thing didn't mess up my life as much as alcohol or drugs," he says. "I couldn't get aspirin [in Vietnam], but I could get morphine. We had two canteens. One with water, one with whatever kind of alcohol you wanted."
When he left the Army, Marshall once again settled in the Lower Ninth Ward. He married, bought a house, worked at a sugar refinery and later drove 18-wheelers across the country. He left that job after rolling his rig over with his best friend inside.
For the next two decades, Marshall spun deeper into depression and dependence. His wife divorced him. He lost his home. Friends and family died in tragic accidents.
Then, in 1997, his youngest son — 18-year-old Bryan Marshall — was carjacked and shot. What hurt most, Marshall says, is the last time he spoke to his son, he'd come home with no shirt and only one shoe, drunk and high.
"From that day to this, I haven't had a speck of drug in my body," he says.
When Hurricane Katrina hit on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, Marshall was living on the first floor of an apartment complex. "We weren't worried about hurricanes," he says about New Orleans residents. "We party for hurricanes."
In Marshall's case, he slept through it. But when he woke up the next morning, his apartment was flooded. First, he thought his toilet had overflowed. Then he looked outside.
"I knew what was happening," Marshall recalls. "I did Betsy."
(Like Katrina, the 1965 hurricane also caused levees in the Lower Ninth Ward to fail.)
By the time Marshall had packed a heavy rucksack, the waters had risen to his chest. He waded toward the Superdome — the only shelter he knew of — through black water full of dead dogs, oil, snakes and rats. But the Superdome was not much better: few police, no supplies and a mob of tired, angry people.
"They were there really trying to do their job," Marshall says about police, "but there weren't enough of them."
"If you were weak, you were beat," he continues. "If you were a female and you didn't have five or six people around you, you was in trouble."
After two days, Marshall feared staying in the Superdome.
"It wasn't the thugs that blew the place up, it was the moms," he says. "Even those people who started singing "We Shall Overcome," they got boisterous."
Marshall decided to leave.
"I wasn't able to deal with the negativity that was coming out of other people," he says. "I wasn't scared of the water. I wasn't scared of the gators. I wasn't scared of the power lines. I got tired of the negativity."
And so Marshall walked straight out of New Orleans, climbing over fences, avoiding downed power lines and sneaking past the gun-toting men who roved the city. Cops waved at him as he walked the 80 miles to Baton Rouge, where he received shelter and food for many days before returning to New Orleans.
Marshall dismisses any notions of blame in what happened: There was never any organization from the federal to the local level, he says; even individuals didn't know how to react to the catastrophe.
"I had family members in New Orleans I called that I'm still waiting to hear from to get me out," he says.
Marshall arrived in Tampa a year ago, first staying with his eldest son and then at Liberty Manor, which houses homeless veterans. But two months ago, fed up with the "negativity" at Liberty Manor, Marshall procured his own apartment at Friendship Palms, a housing complex owned and operated by Project Return. The 24-year-old Tampa nonprofit works with men and women with mental illness to help them become productive and self-sufficient members of society.
"We got to know Norman, and he was really great," says Ian Ross, the program manager of Project Return's housing services. "Despite everything this guy has gone through in life, he has a positive influence."
Marshall hopes sharing his story with the other members of Project Return will help them get beyond the daily hardships of mental illness. Then, after saving enough money, he hopes to return to New Orleans.
"My home is always going to be Louisiana — I miss it a lot," he says. "There will be a new history, but the old history is gone. New Orleans will never be the same. The real heritage has washed away."
He pauses for a moment and continues: "But it's my home and, man, I love those pulled pork po'-boys!"
He laughs and slaps his knee again.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.