LAKE CATHERINE, La. -- The night sky heaved as Fire Chief Joe Perez took another slow cruise down the two-lane road snaking across this town in the last patch of marsh standing between New Orleans and an angry Gulf of Mexico.
It was his final check before he, too, holed up just ahead of Hurricane Katrina.
On his dashboard, the radio was silent. His firefighters had left after a frantic weekend of tying down skiffs, helping folks pack up before the gusts and water arrived, and getting equipment out of harm's way.
Perez slowed and drove down the shell road to St. Nicholas of Myra Church. Sure enough, Father Arthur Ginart was still at his simple steel-frame and brick veneer church built against a backdrop of marsh.
Katrina had developed into a Category 5 monster that nearly filled the gulf on satellite images, and the hellish storm was due to make landfall within 12 hours. It was clear, though, that the 64-year-old priest, limping on prosthetic knees, was digging in, not leaving. Perez got out and walked over.
"You know I may not be able to come back," he said, trying one last time to get the stubborn priest to flee. "This is crazy. You've got to go. There's no telling what this storm's going to do."
"Joe," Ginart said patiently, "I've already told you. No cher, I'm staying. If it's God's will, I'll get washed away. If it's God's will, I'll go down with the church."
The chief nodded. He knew "Father Red" - as the carrot-topped clergyman had come to be known to his flock - well enough to accept defeat.
"I've got one of you all's radios, you know," the priest said reassuringly.
"Father Red, that radio is not going to do you any good."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
Perez nodded and said goodbye.
Five years later
It has been five years since Katrina swept across Lake Catherine, and Father Red remains among the missing.
The precise death toll from the August 2005 storm remains elusive.
There are big differences, in the hundreds, between estimates of how many people perished. The confirmed toll stands at just over 1,800, mostly from Louisiana.
In Louisiana, 135 are, like Ginart, still officially categorized as missing (the Mississippi number is three). But who died where and when is still a mystery in many cases.
By contrast, nearly every victim is accounted for after the 2001 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center. Workers sifted through tons of wreckage for traces of human tissue and bone against which DNA samples - extracted from toothbrushes, combs, clothing - were compared.
Some of those same techniques were used in Katrina's aftermath. But the two disasters were very different. Debris from the Twin Towers was largely confined to Lower Manhattan, but Katrina's havoc was spread across three states.
The story of the dead is told, in part, at the end of Canal Street, where a mausoleum honors the remains of 80 Katrina victims. Half of them are people who were identified but whose families either couldn't be found or didn't want to claim them; and the other half remain unknown.
"New Orleans has been acity for decades where people try to get lost in for various reasons," Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard said.
Father Red was not one of those trying to lose himself.
Town of characters
Sitting on an old land bridge between the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast, the tiny town of Lake Catherine had long ago learned to make peace with the water.
The original town - home to railroad workers, trappers, hunters and fishermen - was wiped out during a hurricane in 1915. Thirty-five people died, but the town was rebuilt.
When Arthur Ginart arrived in 1976, the church of St. Nicholas of Myra - the patron saint of sailors and travelers, as well as the model for Santa Claus - was 5 years old.
With its bleary-eyed fishermen and toothless alligator hunters eating armadillo stew and sucking down beers at Crazy Al's bar on Sunday mornings, it's a world away from New Orleans.
Patrons still chuckle at the memory of Father Red storming in one Sunday while aporno film was playing on the TV over the bar.
"Just turn it off during Mass," the bearded clergyman pleaded. The bar complied.
Ginart wasn't exactly born a saint himself.
Having grown up in New Orleans' blue-collar Bywater district, Ginart smoked and cursed and flirted with alcoholism.
Perhaps all that explained his easy way with the fishermen, trappers and factory workers who made up his flock. He looked his parishioners right in the eye, and kept things short and simple - especially his sermons.
"If I can't say what I want to say in five minutes, it's not worth it," he said. "People stop listening after four minutes."
The search begins
At first, Michael Ginart didn't know whether his uncle and godfather had stayed behind for the storm. When he arrived in Lake Catherine that Friday after Katrina and saw the wreckage, he could only hope.
As he and two friends made their way to the church, heaps of marsh grass, boats, belongings and bits of homes blocked their path. Katrina's surge had reached about 20 feet here, flooding even fishing camps built atop sturdy pilings.
After picking their way along swollen canals and through back bayous, they finally reached St. Nicholas. Walls and doors were blown out. Father Red's trailer was gone.
When Ginart spotted the little orange-red Dodge Neon resting in the marsh, he knew his uncle hadn't left. He loved that car and never would have left it behind.
Ginart, a lawyer, called the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. By June 2006, a forensic pathologist had been hired to spend days scouring the marshes, cypress stands, ponds and bayous near the church.
He found a few personal effects - a couple of photos, a lighter Father Red had saved from his smoking days, one of the priest's numerous jumpsuits.
Others joined the search. In the grass, a searcher found one of Father Red's favorite coffee cups, which had sat behind the priest's desk in the trailer. Corpse-sniffing dogs uncovered more personal items but no bones.
Minyard's office compared the DNA from family members' hair follicles with his database of unclaimed victims. On more than one occasion, Michael Ginart was summoned - for example, to see if the serial numbers from Father Red's knee replacements matched items that had come in.
Nothing.
