MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: When Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, WWNO's Alana Schreiber was 8 years old. She was growing up in Montclair, New Jersey, where the storm was many miles away. But then a little boy named Nigel Tapp came to her town after fleeing Katrina and enrolled in the Montclair community pre-K. And the way his classmates rallied around him still stands out 20 years later. Alana actually lives and works in New Orleans now, and she's here to tell us more. Alana, thank you so much for telling this story.
ALANA SCHREIBER, BYLINE: Thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: So what do you remember about Nigel and the family from New Orleans that came to your town?
SCHREIBER: Yeah. So I was in third grade, but I had remained close with my former pre-K teacher, Ms. Channin (ph). Her first name is Marcie (ph), but, of course, I still call her Ms. Channin. So I remember when this little boy, Nigel, came to Montclair, along with 30 other family members. His classmates were really attached to him and so devastated when he had to leave before the school year was even over. And after the students and teachers learned that he had lost his house in the storm, they all wrote a book called "Nigel And The Hurricane." And they wrote about their memories of Nigel, what they knew about Katrina, and then they would actually sell the book around town to raise money for him and his family.
MARTIN: You actually got in touch with Nigel and reunited his family with the pre-K teacher over Zoom, which is amazing. What was that like?
SCHREIBER: Yeah. Nigel and Ms. Channin were so excited to see each other. They had all these memories, and she explained why she decided the class should write a book in the first place.
MARCIE CHANNIN: Something I was really interested in as a teacher was how books can teach us about real things in the world. After Nigel left, I thought, oh, we could write a book.
SCHREIBER: Nigel was back in New Orleans when the book came out, but he actually remembered learning about "Nigel And The Hurricane."
NIGEL TAPP: It was amazing hearing it because it's like someone cared about me enough to make me a book and just having a community of people who care for me at the time. That's not something that everyone who was affected by that tragedy actually got to feel.
MARTIN: And that wasn't all. You actually surprised Nigel with a reunion of his pre-K classmates on Zoom. Tell us about that.
SCHREIBER: Nigel was so surprised. I mean, eight former classmates took time out of their day to join on Zoom, and so many of them still have a copy of this book - they brought it to the Zoom meeting. And they started by talking about just how much they missed him after he left, and they reflected that in the pages they wrote. Here's Trin Caverness (ph) and Daniel Rosen (ph).
TRIN CAVERNESS: My page was also about after you left 'cause we missed you. And me and Tillie (ph) would, like, dig in the ground and, like, you know how sometimes, like, kids would dig and they say, we're digging at China? And we would try to dig to New Orleans.
DANIEL ROSEN: I am thinking about my page, how after Nigel and his family went back, we would all line up and we would say who is missing and who is missing Nigel. And I remember being just profoundly upset when he left and my parents having to explain to me that, no, it's a good thing. You know? It's - and I was like, no, but he's not here right in front of me, so it's bad.
MARTIN: You know, the kids were so young at the time. Why do you think they remember this so well?
SCHREIBER: I think it's because of how many lessons they learned packed into one experience. They learned about losing a friend, but they also learned about activism and that they can make a difference. Here's Tobin Williams (ph) and Soph Plaut (ph).
TOBIN WILLIAMS: Almost kind of amazes me is the way that us as kids, right? I mean, we combined the fact of us kind of doing art and kind of drawing in this book with something for the greater good in the community to help out you, Nigel. I mean, obviously, brings us together now, and it's something that we'll carry with us forever.
SOPH PLAUT: I feel like it set a precedent for me that what it means to help people is to do the work to help people. The work is not just getting the resources, getting funds. It's putting yourself on the line and getting your emotions deep in it.
MARTIN: Gosh. Speaking of emotions, I'm in tears now. That was WWNO's Alana Schreiber. Alana, thank you so much.
SCHREIBER: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF AERIAL M'S "SKRAG THEME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
