(fox8live.com)New Orleans - For five decades Josie Lewis and Lillian Jones have shared great conversation on their street. Lately they have even more to discuss.
"It means everything to me, I couldn't wait to leave…Georgia to get back home," Lewis said Wednesday as she laughed.
Jones added, "I wanted to be back, be back home and where my children, they're 50 and over but they're still my children and my grandchildren and they're here, so I want to be back home."
Both are back in Pontchartrain Park, a neighborhood situated between Lake Pontchartrain and the Industrial Canal. The neighborhood is proving its resilience as well as renaissance five years after Hurricane Katrina left it in ruins.
Nearby, actor Wendell Pierce jumped on a pile driving machine. Not because he was shooting a movie, but because he is helping to rebuild the neighborhood. Ground was broken for one of the new energy efficient homes Pierce is building as part of his Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation.
"I owed it to my parents to make sure that we rebuilt this neighborhood," Pierce told FOX 8 News. The PPCDC has a goal of building 500 new homes among the older rehabilitated homes.
Pontchartrain Park was birthed during the ugly Jim Crow segregation era, becoming the city's first neighborhood for middle and upper class blacks. A change in the city's history which remains a source of pride.
Pierce embraced a neighborhood realtor, remembering how his parents became a part of Pontchartrain Park. "Mr. Greenup said to my father you fought in World War II, you got the GI bill, give me 10 dollars and I'll hold a house for you."
New models of the homes Pierce and his partners are building sit prominently along Press Drive. They will serve as areas where prospective buyers can make application and choose designs. But Pierce concedes there have been many headaches along the way.
"The whole process has been very difficult, but anything worth having takes work," Pierce stated.
Pierce who relishes growing up in Pontchartrain Park enlisted the help of his childhood friend, developer and consultant Troy Henry. Henry said, "My
parents still live in Pontchartrain Park and when Wendell and I started this initiative the neighborhood just wasn't coming back and I didn't want them to live their remaining life, part of their lives in a neighborhood that was so decimated."
Before Katrina devastated this neighborhood, many of the people living here were retirees, now they're excited that the new construction is bringing in younger families. Ms. Jones said, "It seems like with the new project going on and restoring it, some young people will come back."
Shannon Fazande, a mother of two small children is a taker.
"l thought this would be a perfect place for my family to lay roots," Fazande said.
She was lived in New Orleans East when Katrina hit and decided not to return, choosing Pontchartrain Park instead. "It's more than just a house, you know this is the rebuilding of a very historical, important neighborhood and I'm just honored to be a part of it."
Though Pontchartrain Park is making huge strides since Katrina, including its golf course, it is not without challenges. Streets needing repairs are among them. Still, people there insist their determination and pride is hard to match.
Pierce said, "The insistency and the urgency of the Civil Rights movement that allowed my parents' generation to buy in the 1950s and when this disaster happened it was my generation that said we owe it to them not to let it go."
