A Musical Journey to Santa Monica

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

October 11 -- “Here’s another musician. That’s 20 today,” called out Dean Groover, fresh from New Orleans, as he greeted one of the more than 300 Katrina evacuees who have ended up in Santa Monica.

A musicians’ agent originally from Los Angeles, Groover represents a vanguard of performing artists making their way to the West Coast, then helping friends fly out to the beachside city some 1,500 miles from the hurricane’s wake.

“More of my children,” Groover said as he embraced a tall, athletic black woman with long styled ringlets hanging down her back.

Dean Groover and Red Cross volunteer Melissa Schneider. (Photo by Ann K. Wiiliams)

The evacuees had come to the local Red Cross resource fair last Thursday as the local charity hustled to jury rig a safety net for the newcomers before their housing vouchers run out at the end of October.

By introducing recent evacuees to local clinics, food pantries, transportation services and long term housing providers, the fair will “put faces to heretofore faceless entities” that offer help to those who plan to stay in the area, said Paul Hynek, a member of Red Cross board.

And even while Red Cross volunteers matched existing clients with local and regional social service agencies -- including FEMA, WISE transportation services, Meals on Wheels, the Westside Food Bank, the Salvation Army and the State Department of Social Services -- new cases poured into the Santa Monica chapter for help.

“We’re giving them a bridge to longer-term, more sustainable aid,” Hynek said. “One half or more will probably stay.”

As donations to the local chapter approached $1 million, Hynek urged the community to pitch in at a grass roots level.

Medical care, prescriptions for glasses, free child care for parents who need to look for work, adult school for job retraining -- these are just some of the needs of people who “came here with the clothes on their back,” said Red Cross Health and Safety Service representative Art Rojas,

“If you’re moved, there are a lot of ways you can help that you might not think of,” Hynek said. “You don’t need to have a lot of money. If you want to help, come on by. We’ll find a way.”

Disasters like 9/11 and Katrina make people feel “helpless and fearful,” but “helping others can make you feel in control,” especially “when you help others feel in control,” Hynek said.

“It has a powerful and lasting effect,” he said. “It can be a life changing experience.”

Among those helping other are Groover and his friend, New Orleans pianist Walter Barrilleaux.

They’ve been working around the clock since they’ve arrived in Santa Monica to raise money -- Groover’s spent all his FEMA money and is $1,500 in the hole fronting for tickets -- to fly out as many musicians and their families from New Orleans as they can, Barrilleaux said.

On Thursday morning, Groover and Barrilleaux stood on the Red Cross office steps welcoming the friends they’ve helped move out. And told their stories.

Groover “fell in love with the city” of New Orleans while on a trip to see the Super Bowl four years ago and decided to stay. He weathered the storm and its aftermath in the penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton.

From his vantage he could see the French Quarter, the Ninth Ward and surrounding rooftops, he said.

It was on one of those rooftops that he saw a drama unfold which “just changed my life, that this could happen,” Groover said.

“On the second day after this hit, there was a man on the rooftop, I could see him waving,” he said. “The next day, then the fourth day, I could see the guy waving his arms, maybe he’s drunk, maybe he’s having a party, I couldn’t tell.”

“I saw him walk this way and that. He sat down on the crown on the roof, maybe he fell asleep, and he rolled down off the roof,” Groover recalled, breaking into tears.

He said he didn’t see any of the looting, “no screaming, no raping, none of that crap” that was reported on TV. Instead, he saw “street punks helping little old ladies carry their bags. They stood in food lines and gave their food” -- two pieces of bread and four cubes of cheese was the daily dinner -- “to little kids.”

As to what was happening in the Superdome, Groover said he couldn’t say. He did, however, have a story to tell about a young woman who somehow made her way to him.

“She was flipped out. ‘You’ve got to hide me,’” he said she begged him. “’They’re taking people to the Superdome.’”

Barrilleaux’s perspective was a little different. Though the Gulf Coast native has weathered hurricanes before, he was shaken by the social chaos that followed the storm.

Walter Barrilleaux performing keyboard at Studio Instrument Rental in Hollywood. (Photo by Gene Williams)

Even though his mother’s house where he rode out the storm wasn’t flooded, Barrilleaux decided to move into a shelter at a local middle school a few days after Katrina hit.

Once there, no one was allowed to leave, he said. He spent three days in the school which was “stinking, pitch black at night, nothing to drink.”

All they had to eat were granola bars and small plastic containers of fruit, Barrilleaux said.

He’d brought some water which was stolen from him, even though, “I would have given it to them if they’d asked me,” he said.

Finally a national guardsman asked Barrilleaux to get his tire iron out of his car so they could smash in a drink machine.

He got to the trunk of his car, pulled out the tire iron and looked up to see a deputy leveling a gun at him, Barrilleaux said.

His girlfriend got in between the two of them, but the deputy wouldn’t lower the gun, he said.

When they got back into the shelter, they had “kids with small hands reach up into the machines to get the drinks.”

Barrilleaux, like Groover, wept as his told his story.

The Santa Monica Red Cross chapter is located at 1450 Eleventh Street and can be reached at (310) 394-3773 or on its web site.

Groover’s cadre of musicians is performing Thursday nights at Studio Instrument Rentals (SIR) in Hollywood thanks to the generosity of owner Dolff Rempp. For details call (323) 957-5460.