The Littlest Hero: One Year Ago Today

by digby

One year ago today I was as depressed as I’d ever been after watching a week’s worth of Katrina aftermath horrors. And then I saw this story on Talk Left:

In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

…Deamonte volunteered his vital statistics. He said his father was tall and his mother was short. He gave his address, his phone number and the name of his elementary school.

He said that the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building. The children were clean and healthy ? downright plump in the case of the infant, said Joyce Miller, a nurse who examined them. It was clear, she said, that “time had been taken with those kids.” The baby was “fat and happy.”

Later, more details emerged:

Deamonte began to give more details to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big Buddy mentor: How he saw his mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter. How he promised her he’d take care of his little brother.

[…]

Late Saturday night, they found Deamonte’s mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children’s pictures on a website set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was waiting to take the children to Texas.

Here’s the kid last February, doing well in the first grade in San Antonio.

February 2006
Alan Rochkus, principal of Harmony Hills Elementary School, watches Demonte Love, first-grader, complete a math puzzle while a KSAT-12 photojournalist films him. Love rescued six children, ranging in age from 5 months to three years, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La. He received a Trumpet Award for his heroism.

It does your heart good, doesn’t it?

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