Editor’s note: Mississippi Today Ideas is publishing guest essays from people impacted by Hurricane Katrina during the week of the 20th anniversary of the storm that hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

Speaking about Hurricane Katrina feels almost like speaking at a funeral. There’s grief, memory and the weight of honoring both those who survived and those who did not. The storm was not just another hurricane. It was a turning point in countless lives, mine included.

The day before Katrina made landfall was a Sunday. I told my mother Lorna Rose Daniels to be ready at noon to evacuate our homes only blocks from the beach in Pass Christian. As we prepared to leave, my father Harold Thomas Daniels was busy moving vehicles out to my grandmother’s house in DeLisle.

Around noon,

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