| Length | 07:40 |
| Licensor | BSR Radio |
| Producer(s) | Adeline Goss |
| Formats | Debut (not aired nationally), Interview, Youth Produced |
| Topics | Family, Media, News |
| Produced | May 12, 2006 |
| Added to PRX | July 18, 2006 |
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Profile of McCusker, who stayed to photograph Hurricane Katrina
Produced for Voices of New Orleans, a special one-hour broadcast on Brown Student Radio on May 12, 2006. Producers of Voices of New Orleans were Adeline Goss, Britt Harwood, Peter McElroy and Colin Baker.
English
In April 2006, John McCusker sat down over oyster po'boys at Cooter Brown's to describe the stresses of reporting Hurricane Katrina, its aftermath, and the slow rebuilding of his hometown.
Our interview occurred just four months before McCusker was arrested during an altercation with New Orleans police - an incident McCusker says was the combined result of post-Katrina stress and a dose, hours before, of the anti-depressant medication Clonazepam (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003054548).
Here, McCusker describes the blockades he faces in his everyday struggle to rebuild his ruined Lakeview home, recover his finances, and rebuild his family life. He maintains hope and humor despite these overwhelming obstacles. The story concludes:
"There's some nights that just in despair you lay in your bed, and like you?re a three-year-old child you just lay there and say, I want to go home. I want to go home. And you can?t go home...You go some days where you don?t think about it and things are okay and you just kind of move along through your life. But then, one day, maybe you get a FEMA rejection letter, maybe you have a terse discussion with the guy handling your SBA loan, maybe your insurance adjuster promised to meet you somewhere and he doesn?t show up, you know, and anything. And you?re right back to August 29th...
?I was a worrier, Dad was a worrier, you know, and I?d worry about this and worry about that. And I started thinking, all of the things in my life that I spent all the time worrying about, and none of them did anything to me that could in anyway compare with this mystery that comes out of the Gulf and just destroys the city and just ruined my life. So if anything it's made me more of a New Orleanian. Because I'm not worrying about anything. I'm glad to be alive."
