Deangelo Peterson slowly navigated through putrid water in the flooded streets of New Orleans East five years ago.
Peterson, now a junior tight end, used one arm to paddle in the 6-foot high waters on Bullard Avenue service road on an eerie August evening, while the other arm carried his mother Deborah.
In what seemed like a nightmare, rather than reality, the Petersons were amid one of the largest natural disasters in American history, as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina rapidly pumped water into the defenseless streets of New Orleans and its surrounding areas.  
Deangelo and five others — his mother, two sisters, and two nieces — were forced to evacuate from his aunt Yolanda’s apartment, after the first floor became completely flooded. The group originally came from their actual house three blocks away, which ended up completely submerged in water from storm surge.  
Deborah Peterson couldn’t swim, so Deangelo helped orchestrate two trips to a nearby Quality Inn hotel.
“The whole time I was worrying, what’s going to happen next? Are we going to make it out? When’s the next time we’re going to eat? When’s the next time we’re going to have clean clothes?” Peterson recalled.
After spending two miserable nights in the hotel, the Peterson family somehow managed to catch a boat to a destroyed Chef Menteur Highway and then found an 18-wheeler to take them into town. Unfortunately, they were far from being safe.
Meanwhile, less than 20 miles west of the Peterson’s predicament, Daniel Graff and his family were about to embark on a voyage to remember.  
Graff, a senior special teams player, was enrolled at Louisiana-Lafayette at the time on a partial track scholarship and came back to his home in Metairie to visit family before Katrina hit.
Unlike the Petersons, the Graffs were able to evacuate when they stumbled upon a hotel vacancy in Little Rock, Ark., Fifteen hours later — seven more than it would normally take — Graff and 13 other family members arrived at their destination.
Graff’s house suffered minimal damage in comparison to others in surrounding areas. A tree destroyed his roof and electrical lines and left the family without power until mid-October.
“It’s definitely a humbling experience because I thought my house was pretty well damaged, and when I went to some of these houses, they had nothing — 10 feet of water and everything they owned was destroyed,” Graff said. “They had to start their whole lives over again.”
Back in New Orleans, matters seemed like they couldn’t get any worse for Peterson, who was 16 years old at the time and a star football player at Desire Street Academy. But they did.
Peterson’s four days at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center still haunt him to this day.  
As many as 20,000 people filled the convention center, which had no food, water, medical assistance and limited police presence when evacuees started pouring in Aug. 29.
The Petersons did have minimal food and water, though, upon arrival. Despite what limited supplies they had, nothing could have prepared them for what they would soon endure.
“When we were there, children were being taken … and later to find out they were either dead or raped,” Peterson said. “Me and my cousin … basically stayed up three straight nights, watching my momma, watching my sister.”
Violence heightened during the family’s stay, leaving thousands of people on edge.
Deangelo’s older sister, Beatrice, recalled one instance when chaos and eventually gunfire ensued.
“Everybody started shooting and fighting and people were running all over the convention center,” she said.
Hours seemed like days and days seemed like weeks for Peterson and his family. They eventually took a helicopter to the airport and caught a flight to San Antonio, calling it their home for the near future.
Yet while stories like the Petersons’ are horror-filled memories and still fresh in the minds of many, a few individuals benefited from others tragedies.  
Sophomore wide receiver Russell Shepard, one of the most prized recruits in LSU’s 2009 recruiting class, insisted Katrina was a blessing in disguise.
“If Katrina never happened, and I never got to meet the good people, I never would have been here,” he said. “That’s a 100 percent guarantee.”
After the hurricane, thousands of evacuees were shipped west to either Houston or San Antonio. One evacuee was Hasan Lipscomb, a former LSU recruit from New Orleans who landed at Shepard’s Cypress Ridge High School in Houston after the storm.
Lipscomb ended up committing to Minnesota, but his close-knit friendship with Shepard pointed him toward Baton Rouge.
“He taught me what it was like to be from Louisiana and LSU football,” said Shepard, who had never heard anything about LSU before meeting Lipscomb.   
While Shepard remained nearly six hours away from the destruction, Graff spent the next four years rebuilding his house with his family. Peterson had nothing to return to and went back to Desire, which temporarily relocated to Florida, and then on to LSU.
His mother ended up back in New Orleans to start over, but Peterson has yet to return to the house he once called home.
“Everytime someone brings Katrina up, I have flashes about it,” Peterson said. “I try not to bring it up that much. You try to put it in your past.”