More than 250 worshippers gathered at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Catholic Church in Chalmette for a mass to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Katrina.

For Terri Ducote, the gathering was was deeply personal. Ducote’s father, 81, drowned in Katrina’s waters in the family’s longtime Arabi home after she was unable to convince him to evacuate.

“My parents were divorced and my mother was remarried and living someplace else and it fell to me to get him out, but I couldn’t,” Ducote said, her voice starting to crack. “I’m not still grieving, but it’s just sad because he was so hardheaded. He would not leave.”

Like so many other parts of the metro area, St. Bernard Parish was devastated by Katrina’s floodwaters. But unlike the Lower Ninth Ward or Lakeview, Chalmette, Arabi and other St. Bernar

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