Storied and Commemorated Beyond Remembered

For a professor of American history, Boston and Philadelphia may seem like the ‘mother lode,’ but, to this observer, may pale in histories as diverse as the mix of cultures and residents of Orleans Parish.

Garden District homes bear embossed, metal plaques that typically herald an architect’s name and the year the home was built, for whom the home was built and notable residents, or both.

Statues and plaques commemorate territorial claims by the British, French and Spanish, and even the C.S.A., Confederate States of America.

The 9th Ward of Orleans Parish has a memorial to Hurricane Katrina which incorporates an ascending line of blue poles--tallest of them, over 10 feet--to mark the depth of flood waters that took 3,000 structures, displaced 14,000 people, and didn't recede until mid-October of 2005.

In one particularly lavish cemetery, many of the granite or marble repositories cost well over a million dollars to construct, have been privately landscaped and are hands-off to groundskeepers, with private funds paying gardeners to maintain the trees and flowers and grass into perpetuity.

Like Boston and Philadelphia, New Orleans remembers and, unlike them, doesn’t forget.