Chris Rose
Columnist
The Times-Picayune

Citation
In the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans were scared and scattered about the country, grasping for meaning and searching for even a shred of hope. Fortunately, they had Chris Rose. Writing for The Times-Picayune, Rose gave his readers perspective and voiced their truths, offering insights and an emotional depth that news stories and photographs could not convey. In his columns, Rose created a front stoop where all of New Orleans could gather and begin again to feel like a community. In the words of one of his readers, Rose was an "elegant Everyman." Writing about how he struggled to explain the aftermath of Katrina to his daughter, Rose quotes his daughter as asking him, "Is everything in New Orleans broken?" In Rose's columns, he makes it clear that while New Orleans has been bent and banged up, it is far from broken.

Excerpt
The Elephant Men
October 25, 2005
We stoop-sitters tend to get very wry and blend dark humor with our rants against the machine, but sometimes it gets very sad.
We often deal with First Timer Syndrome. As my immediate neighbors trickle back into town, one by one—either just to clean up and move on or to move back in for good--they generally end up on my stoop. And they often cry.
It's the first time they've been back to town and they are shaken to their very core at what they've seen and smelled and we grizzled veterans of this war try to provide shelter from their storm.
They apologize for losing it but we tell them that many tears have been shed here on this stoop and they are ours and it's OK. It happens to all First Timers. Hell, it happens still.
They're easy to spot, the First Timers. They either sob or they sit silent and sullen, the occasional pull on a bottle of beer, with very little to add to the conversation of the night.
The next night, they usually come back, and they are a little better. One day at a time. Ain't that the way of life around here?
We sit around night after night because some of us are unable to sit still in a restaurant for 90 minutes or aren't ready to go back to the bar scene. Many can't concentrate on reading and television seems like an empty gesture so we talk, and we talk about the same damn thing over and over.
We talk about it. The elephant in the room.
I suspect many folks have sat with us and thought, upon going home: You guys need to get a grip. You need to talk about something else. You need to get a life.
That may be, but I, personally, have been unable to focus on anything but the elephant. I have tried to watch TV or read a magazine but when I see or hear phrases like "Tom and Katy" or "World Series" or "Judge Miers," my mind just glazes over and all I hear is the buzz of a fluorescent light. That is the sound of my cerebral cortex now.
I can't hear what they're saying on TV. I don't know what they're talking about. I think: Why aren't they talking about the elephant?

Biography
Chris Rose began working at The Times-Picayune in the summer of 1984, covering crime in the suburb of Jefferson Parish and the politics of two small incorporated cities. Over the years, he covered local and national politics, general features, regional culture and economics, and New Orleans nightlife, music and personalities. Upon his return to New Orleans on the Monday after Hurricane Katrina, he began to cover the early stirrings of life in the streets and has stayed with that beat ever since, chronicling the city as it puts itself back together, shakes off its trauma, and tries to find footing as a viable community. The Pulitzer Prize Board named him a finalist in the commentary category for his post-Katrina columns. Rose, who was born in Washington, D.C. in 1960 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1982, is a frequent commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition and a writer/performer of several critically acclaimed stage shows in New Orleans. He is married with three young children.

Articles
"The Elephant Men" Part I, Part II

"1 Dead in Attic" Part I, Part II