Charles McCann

Charles McCann had put in 30 years as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, and he planned on retiring. That was before Hurricane Katrina, when everything changed.

McCann was born and raised in the Lower 9th Ward, and for the past 32 years he’s walked its streets, delivering the mail. No one knows the Lower 9th Ward like McCann does.

“It’s completely gone,” he said matter-of-factly.

Families are gone. McCann made 832 deliveries per day before the storm struck. Sixteen of those stops remain on his route today.

“I see a lot of old memories and a lot of memories washed away,” McCann said. “A lot of people are gone. A lot of them stayed (during the storm), and they’re not here anymore.”

Homes are gone.

“A lot of these people were older people, and they really didn’t believe in insurance,” McCann said. “Other houses are just sitting there while the families bicker over the estate.”

Street signs are gone, too – no small matter if you’re a letter carrier.

The post office that serves the Lower 9th housed 12 letter carriers the day before Katrina struck. Now, McCann and one other carrier remain.

McCann could have retired, but his familiarity with the neighborhood remains a valuable asset as the Lower 9th limps its way to recovery. Doing his job makes McCann feel like he’s pitching into that effort.

“I don’t need signs,” he said. “I was born and raised here. Physically, I can’t get out there and clean houses, so it’s nice to be able to make sure people get their mail.”

McCann returned to work in October 2005, but did not deliver a single letter until June 2006.

“When I first came back, certain streets you couldn’t even go down,” he said.

Instead, letter carriers in the Lower 9th handed out mail from the post office to people who had returned to their homes. Again, his familiarity with the neighborhood proved invaluable.

“People knew me; I knew them,” he said. “The only thing I required them to have an ID for is if they had some kind of check.”

Letter carriers spent the rest of their days in the months after Katrina processing change-of-address requests.

How many? Before the storm, McCann estimated, the entire state would process about 500 change of address forms per day. In the months after Katrina, individual stations in New Orleans were processing thousands per day.

Now, with more and more people returning to their homes, McCann and his fellow carriers are seeing their workloads increase.

“We’re bringing (carriers) back when we get more deliveries, but we have to fight with management to prove we need more people,” he said. “They sent more than half of our carriers someplace else.”