Success After Tragedy

Alex James
English 1001
10-16-07
Ms. Lei Lani

Success After Tragedy
Although Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophic event, it provided thousands of opportunities. In Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, anyone willing to work hard was rewarded handsomely in the end. Most of these jobs involved heavy manual labor and skill. Those who already had experience in trades like plumbing, construction, lawn service and other forms of blue collar labor quickly became some of the most successful men and women of the devastated area. Government programs such as FEMA were scrutinized for much of their hesitation and poor management immediately after Katrina, but were not exactly a complete failure. They provided jobs to many of the locals and out of town helpers alike in the following weeks.
One of the locals that had been deeply affected by this horrific storm was Darren Brown. Speaking to him over the phone you could tell he was an energetic man just by the way he skipped from subject to subject without taking a breath and the enthusiasm in his words. Prior to the storm Darren Brown owned his own landscaping business. It was a somewhat small company normally consisting of him and a single helper to do the lawn maintenance and landscaping to his few loyal customers. He generally had about thirty five yards to maintain in a given week. Darren would cut and edge the lawn, trim hedges and trees, weed gardens and any many other small tasks to please his clients. He told me that “many big companies don’t get on a personal level with their clients and do the small things that make them happy in the long run” which gave me the impression that Darren Brown found customer satisfaction to be a major part of his work.
Before the storm, Darren Brown lived in a small house located in one of the older portions of Slidell. His home was on a pretty large piece of land when compared to other property around him, and was surrounded by huge pine trees, some in excess of eighty years of age. It was a very humble house with old cast iron hand rails on the front stoop, dull paint, and faded terracotta roofing. The inside was a typical bachelor pad with little decoration and just enough furniture to have the occasional guest for dinner or to watch a game of football. It gave me an idea of Darren’s priorities when I saw his garage. He had seemingly spent what money he had on things to further his business rather than his personal comfort such as two brand new, top of the line lawn mowers that cost upward of seven hundred dollars.
Darren enjoyed his work and the satisfaction of seeing his customers happy with their new garden or sprinkler system that he put so much effort into. He told me that his business was very different than others for a few reasons. One was that most companies that are small normally stick to one type of service. Darren does many services such as sprinkler irrigation, lawn maintenance, landscaping, and the occasional construction of fences. The reason why he can do all of these horticultural services is because he manages his time wisely. Considering that he normally only kept one to two helpers at a time he learned to space his jobs accordingly. He calls it “the balance.”
During this time before the storm he would cut and maintain his thirty five yards in the Kenner and New Orleans area during the week and save his larger jobs for Saturdays. Darren described the maintenance jobs as what pays the bills and the landscaping jobs as what keeps him happy. Landscaping jobs are normally much more profitable than lawn care but landscaping is not consistent all year long. Most landscaping services are required in the spring and summer meaning that if it was not for his lawn care customers he would have a very small source of income during fall and winter. His annual earnings because of this was around sixty thousand a year, which is pretty high for a blue collar worker.
Darren did not exactly dream of being a landscaper. He actually was once a mechanic for the Ford dealership. He didn’t enjoy his work very much or the little money that he was getting so he decided to make a change. He started to work for one of his friends by the name of Mike levy, who began to teach him the tools and tricks of landscaping. He worked with Mike Levy for a number of years until Mike finally sold Darren Res/Com, the portion of the company that dealt with commercial and residential lawn care. Twenty years later Darren is still a lawn maintence professional. Over the years Darren lost his original clientele mostly because of their location and lack of profit but kept a good deal of them for over a decade.
All was well for Darren near the end of august of two thousand five. He had scored many large landscaping jobs during the peak of summer and with his assistant leaving for school, he was getting prepared for the less busy season of fall. This was all until one of the greatest natural disasters to ever hit an American city occurred. Darren decided to ride out the storm in his old house despite many of his friend’s and family’s request. That decision could have cost his life. The following morning he was standing in his front yard trying to assess the damage to his home. The large pine trees that surrounded his house were now part of it. Three of these trees that were over five feet in width had cut through his home like a knife through butter. Water had poured through the opening throughout the nitght ruining the little bit of furniture he had. The thing that affected him most was however not part of his home at all, but the destruction of the twin span. Without this bridge that he took every day to get to his customers, he would not be able to have an income until they were rebuilt. In this time of need he looked to FEMA were they had available jobs in emergency roof repair. For the next six weeks Darren made a considerable amount of money from constructing hundreds of the blue roof repairs. This was considered a positive step to getting his house rebuild to Darren.
Because of the storm, there was no shortage of work when it came to outdoor physical labor. This was a profitable outcome for Darren because of his experience and expertise in landscaping. Job after job, Darren would collect paychecks that gave him enough money to not only fix his old home but restore it to even better condition than it was before. He now owns a seven thousand dollar riding lawn mower and other expensive tools that help him complete his jobs more effectively. After the storm he received an annual pay increase of about forty thousand meaning now he makes about one hundred thousand a year. Darren Brown later on tells me that Hurricane Katrina was the best and worst thing that has ever happened to him.