Some Loews "family" members (from right): Wil Gordon, hotel services; Justin Donnaud, food services; Kelvin Jones, engineering; Barbara Luckete, banquet; and Ray Bruce, human resources.

Workers at the Loews Hotel in downtown New Orleans feel blessed.  They have jobs, they are getting their lives back, they feel secure, and can see a future for themselves and their families. They also have something that few other workers in the city have: An employer that never hesitated to help them in their most trying time.

The storm is history and the disaster is in the record. The stories of trauma and despair are overwhelming.  Acts of kindness and mercy are blended with those of atrocity and neglect.  It is easy to abandon values of compassion and humanity when everything around you has been wiped out.  But at the Loews Hotel, first thoughts were about how everyone was going to survive.  

As Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, management and staff at Loews were doing all they could to protect guests and employees, keep them safe at the hotel, or get them help with shelter or evacuation. Their story is one that most people in the storm-ravaged city only wish could have happened to them.

Loews, the only union hotel left in the city, employs about 200 people – union members who belong to UNITE HERE.  The 285-room hotel on Poydras Street is located across from Harrah’s Casino and three blocks from the river. It was built in 2003 as part of a development that included $22 million in union pension funds.  

In the greater New Orleans area, most of which lies below sea level, those city areas closest to the river tend to have the highest elevation.  After Katrina left its mess, storm waters and levee breaches didn’t dampen the caring spirit or reach the property of the hotel, because their location was above sea level and the tide of destruction.

Kelvin Jones knows how lucky the Loews was to have physically suffered less than most.  He works in the hotel’s engineering section.  Jones has a family who all survived, but he lost his house and most of his worldly possessions to the storm.  

But Loews kept him on the payroll while the hotel was closed, found resources to help him recover from his losses, and provided shelter and housing at the hotel during and after the storm. That gave Jones a way to regroup and reclaim a part of his life while he worked to construct the rest.  

“We are like a family here at the Loews,” Jones says.  “When we all needed our family to help out after the storm, everyone was there helping out.” 

Loews was fortunate that the building didn’t suffer extreme damage from the storm.  Broken windows, and water and wind damage, were minimal enough to allow a faster schedule for repair, recovery and reopening than most businesses in the city.  

And Loews did move fast: By October 17, about 6 weeks after the storm, rooms were available and staff were again serving customers.  In all that time, it had been clear to employees that no matter what the consequences, hotel management put them first on the list of things to deal with. 

Ray Bruce, human resources director for the hotel, says it is ingrained in company culture to care for their family. “Our employees are like family.  After the storm, we needed to do anything we could to help them.   Our corporate headquarters pretty much said, 'Tell us what you need and we’ll get it there'.” 

Testimony of that blank check showed up a day after that first conversation, when an overnight package filled with cash arrived at the hotel from corporate headquarters.  Bruce and some of his managers needed the cash to help provide fast assistance to workers in need.  Checks and credit cards, for those workers who might have them, were meaningless tender in a state where banks, ATMs, phones, retail, and all financial systems were shut down.  

Bruce and other managers traveled around the area, checking shelter rolls, seeking their employees so they could give them cash to help them purchase transportation, food, and housing in more stable and accommodating environs. Loews also set up a disaster-relief fund that provided workers with up to $2,500. 

Staff who worked at Loews prior to Katrina and came back looking for their jobs were accommodated. Others who left the city received help and referrals in finding jobs at other hotels.

Many co-workers have not returned because they don’t have anywhere to live.  Those who did embark on a rebuilding plan very much needed a secure job to keep them going financially.  Loews helped provide that.

Banquet staffer Deborah Luckete lost her house and possessions, and knows she is fortunate to have an employer willing to treat her and her co-workers so well.  “We were lucky to be here.  So many others had no help and they are still struggling,” she said.

“I lost it all, but my family is still with me, that’s all that counts,” says Wll Gordon, who works in hotel services.  Loews managers, he said, “were very helpful and generous, and my family owes a lot to them. We were more able to repair our lives because of the help we had.”  

“I’ll have my home back soon,” says Justin Donnaud, a chef in food services.  His St. Bernard Parish home was destroyed and torn down. A modular home will be placed on risers over the pad that was his previous foundation.   

“I’ve built my new home on 4-foot stilts – in the next flood, I’ll only be flooded 4 feet.” he says.  “These people here were incredible in helping me get back my life.  You just don’t know what that means and how draining it can be unless you were here.”

For the workers at Lowes, their employer became a silver lining, shining as bright as the Loews sign on a dark New Orleans night, in the stormy clouds that still linger two years post-Katrina.

Story and photos by Leo Canty, AFT-Connecticut