Danny Murphy (COL ’09), a New Orleans native who remembers sitting on a ladder as a child and catching beads during Mardi Gras, is one of them. He plans to bring a group of Georgetown friends home over spring break so that they can get a taste of the Mardi Gras experience.

“I just wanted to show some friends what it’s like,” Murphy says. “I’m excited to show them the two sides of New Orleans — both the despair and the celebration that it is now.”

Confined to a single day in most celebrations around the world, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the climax to two weeks of non-stop parades and parties known as Carnival.

“Just think of the biggest party you have ever experienced, with hundreds of thousands more people and not as nearly as many rules,” New Orleans native Trey Picou (COL ’09) says.

Murphy notes that the celebration is an opportunity for revelry, but also an expression of identity for New Orleans citizens.

“I would just say it is the coming together of all the good feeling of the city and whoever happens to be there,” Murphy explains. “It’s not just a tourist attraction.”

The pride and historical signifance wrapped up in the party only grew in the wake of Katrina’s Category 5 pounding in August 2005. Murphy remembers the eerie desolation enveloping the streets of his hometown on his first trip back.

“I was driving through my friend’s neighborhood and there are no lights,” Murphy recalls. “The only lights lighting up the area were the lights of my car and all you see [is] the trash on side walks. You just saw ruined lives on the sidewalks.”

Murphy and Picou both attended Mardi Gras last year, but the festivities were nearly canceled due to the local government’s concerns about the city’s capacity to handle the event for the first time since the storm. The party went through, but on a much smaller scale.

This year, Mardi Gras promises to be larger, a return to the swirling colors of green, gold and purple revelry. For those who remember what the party used to be, 2007 will be an opportunity to return the festival to that which has for so long been a part of their lives.

“This one will be a little bigger, a little closer to normal, and anything closer to normal is really important to the process,” Murphy says.

Georgetown lent a helping hand in the aftermath of the hurricane, temporarily enrolling 83 displaced students from affected universities, including Tulane and Loyola. Georgetown students ran fundraising events for the victims, including a large benefit concert, and even conducted humanitarian work in the disaster zone.

In early 2006, Haamid “Happy” Johnson (COL ’07) founded Blanket New Orleans, a student effort to collect blankets for the victims of Katrina, after volunteering for the American Red Cross in the ravaged area during December 2005. He conceived the idea when the emergency response vehicle he was driving ran out of blankets.

Blanket New Orleans’ first delivery to the city was a startling success. During two consecutive weekend trips, Johnson and his friends went door to door on every block until 400 blankets worth about $4,000 were delivered. Each weekend, the blankets were snapped up within three hours.

The organization’s fundraising goal this year is to quadruple the amount raised last year.

“We want to end the school year having raised $15,000,” Johnson says, adding that he hopes to eventually establish his group as a corporation and move into office space in New Orleans.

“Right now, the Georgetown community is at the forefront of the college campus movement to rebuild New Orleans,” Johnson says. “There has been a tremendous response from the students, faculty and staff.”

From March 4 to 10, the Blanket New Orleans Disaster Action Team will scour the neighborhoods of New Orleans, helping to clean up the damaged city and learning more about rebuilding efforts still needed in the area. They won’t be the only Hoyas in town, though.

A group of 28 Georgetown students and two faculty advisors have foregone more plush spring break destinations to travel to the Big Easy on an alternative spring break trip with Habitat for Humanity. The Habitat group will help rebuild homes destroyed by Katrina and stay in a elementary school converted into lodging.

Georgetown’s Habitat for Humanity had wanted to go to New Orleans last year, but could not find an open space in the mad rush of national organizations to provide relief. So they went instead to build homes in hurricane-damaged Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“When we saw that [New Orleans] was open this year, we jumped at the opportunity,” says Edward Hanson (COL ’09), who is one of the five student leaders planning the New Orleans Habitat trip. “Everyone coming out on the trip is very excited and ready to work.”

Murphy will be heading back home for the second time this month to participate in relief work as well.

“I wish I could build a house for everyone in New Orleans, and many people feel the same way,” Murphy says. “I’m just happy to have free time to help someone out.”

Habitat humanitarians and French Quarter natives alike all believe Mardi Gras is essential to the reconstruction of the city.

“It is part of the city’s culture and history, and I think it is totally necessary that this sort of tradition continues in the city, even while I do see that the city is a changed place,” says Loretta Johnson (COL ’08), also one of the five student leaders on the Habitat trip and a frequent visitor to New Orleans.

As an intern for Rep. Gene Taylor, (D-Miss.), whose district was also hit hard by the storm, Loretta Johnson learned about the challenging obstacles that lay ahead in rebuilding the Gulf Coast. She is wary of solely celebrating the party atmosphere of Mardi Gras.

“I think that in terms of wanting to draw the kind of national focus onto New Orleans about receiving help, you don’t want to say that it’s a city that just parties and that it needs help,” she says. “The city has to be very careful about how it presents itself.”

“Tourism is vital to the economic vitality of the city, and Mardi Gras is the apex of all tourism pretty much,” Happy Johnson adds. “For New Orleans, it’s the bloodline to the economic growth, especially after Katrina.”

New Orleans natives falter for a moment as they struggle to find a way to describe the post-Katrina relationship of New Orleans with the centuries-old tradition of Mardi Gras.

“Mardi Gras has taken on a new meaning in a way,” Murphy says. “It’s just something to rally around and to make people who don’t have a lot to smile about smile again. It’s not really escapism. It’s something to break up the monotony of a terribly slow rebuilding process.”