Diana Terry didn't know anything about Alexandria.
"I never knew anyone from Alexandria," Terry said. "I didn't even know where Alexandria was."
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But that changed last year when Hurricane Katrina pushed the New Orleans native, her husband and their two sons to higher ground.
Diana and her husband, Ernest, are both pharmacists. And both were working in New Orleans-area hospitals when Katrina hit on Aug. 29."Pharmacists are always essential personnel, and since I was the director, I had to be there," said Terry, who at the time was working as Lindy Boggs Memorial Center's pharmacy director.
She was evacuated on Wednesday following the storm.
Her husband -- working at Chalmette Medical Center, which was flooded by 16 feet of water -- was flown out with their two sons by Black Hawk helicopters the next day.
"We started looking for jobs because we knew the hospitals where we worked were not going to reopen," Terry said.
So, Ernest Terry accepted the pharmacy director's position at Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital.
And Diana took over as assistant pharmacy director at Rapides Regional Medical Center.
They could have moved to Morgan City or Thibodeaux, but chose Central Louisiana instead.
"It's much quieter here," Terry said. "And we needed to be some place quiet to have some time to focus on our kids."
Mary Bagley, a former Slidell resident and medical technologist at Chalmette Medical Center, felt the same way.
She evacuated to Cenla just before the storm.
"It was about two days later I realized I wasn't going to have a job to go back to," said Bagley, who now works as a medical technologist at RRMC. "At first, I thought it was going to be temporary. But every time I went back to Slidell, it was so chaotic.
"It was much quieter here. I could have gone to Houston or Baton Rouge, but those didn't seem quite the place for me."
Bagley and the Terrys have bought homes in Pineville and plan to stay.
At Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital, hurricane evacuees now fill between 15 and 20 ancillary staff positions and two RN positions. Two physicians -- a hospitalist and a sports medicine specialist -- have also decided to stay in Cenla.
"At the peak, we had about 17 employees we were able to hire and most of those were hard-to-fill positions," said Allen Crain, Rapides Regional Medical Center's director of human resources.
The list included respiratory therapists, physical therapists, medical technicians, RNs and pharmacists.
"A lot of those have gone back," Crain said. "But five of them are still here. And most of those are filling hard to recruit positions.
"In that way, we have benefitted. And, I hope they have benefitted as well."
"We're happy here. We're content. We've made friends here," Terry said. "It gave us an opportunity to see other parts of Louisiana. Places I've never thought I'd get to ... Ferriday, Jonesville, Marksville. There are other parts of the state besides New Orleans,"
"I would have never, ever thought about moving on my own," Bagley said. "I know there's good and bad in every situation. And this was just meant to be."
thetowntalk.com
