On August 24, 2005, like everyone else in the world, Louisiana and her people were busy about the business of planning their future. Planning for the next weekend, planning for the next day.
But hundreds of miles east of Louisiana, a storm was brewing. At 10 am CDT on this date 21 years ago, Tropical Depression Twelve officially became Tropical Storm Katrina. Five days later, it would become something so incomprehensible that people still talk about it. So big, of course, that football wasn’t even important at the time.
We really know neither the day nor the hour when something incomprehensible will arrive. Ours was a hot day in August.
On Wednesday the 24th, new LSU head coach Les Miles appeared for the first edition of The Les Miles Show at Walk-On’s in Baton Rouge alongside longtime radio voice Jim Hawthorne. The two were discussing Miles and the team’s preparations for the Season opener on Sept. 3rd.
By Monday, everything they had discussed about the opener would prove useless. Katrina struck Louisiana on August 29. LSU’s athletic buildings took on purposes nobody could’ve imagined for them five days earlier. The Carl Maddox Field House became a special-needs shelter. The Pete Maravich Assembly Center became a medical triage center. Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters landed inside Bernie Moore Track Stadium. Washers once used for the sweat and grime of football and basketball uniforms were used to clean sheets and towels for storm victims.
August 24, 2005 tells us to carry necessary planning with some humility. Tomorrow must be planned for, but it is neither promised nor our final end. Everyone inside the LSU football program and across Louisiana were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing that Wednesday. That same day, hundreds of miles away, a monster was receiving its name.
On Wednesday, the LSU Tigers had North Texas circled on its calendar. By Monday, the helicopters were landing at Bernie Moore and the PMAC was a hospital.
Make the plan, then, and live accordingly. Laissez les bons temps rouler, right? But may we remember that the good times are never promised to last, and tomorrow has never promised a sunny day. As for me, the 29th of August set the stage for the unlikely course in life that I traverse to this day.
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