The educator/preacher: ‘It was stressful. It was indescribable’

For Edward Spears, moving to Fort Worth has been filled with opportunity.

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Spears is now the director of adult education for the Fort Worth school district.

He’s also the founder and pastor of Faith and Love Church of God in Christ in south Fort Worth.

But even after spending the past decade in Tarrant County, Spears considers New Orleans home, though he said his family will never live there again.

The family’s home in New Orleans East was covered in sludge and was a total loss.

“We always want to go back, but we want to go back to the city before the storm,” Spears said. “You want to go to places where you’ve always gone, but they literally don’t exist anymore.”

After Katrina, Spears stayed in a friend’s guest bedroom in New Orleans while his wife, Suzette, and their five children moved to Fort Worth.

“It was traumatic,” said Spears, who was director of the Jefferson Workforce Business Connection Center, where he tried to help people find jobs after the storm.

“You got this mixture of you’re helping rebuild this city but you can’t rebuild your life. I couldn’t see my wife. I couldn’t see my kids. I was living in someone’s guest room. It was stressful. It was indescribable.”

When his wife was offered a permanent job around Thanksgiving 2005, the family decided to make the move to Fort Worth permanent. She now works as a reading specialist for the Mansfield school district.

“My wife as of last year, maybe the year before, finally reconciled that we definitely weren’t going back,” Spears said. “She loves Fort Worth. She loves working with the school kids. But in her heart of hearts, she was still hoping that maybe we go back.”

As for his hometown, Spears compares the city’s changes to a chef tinkering with a New Orleans staple.

“You can’t re-create a dish if you substitute ingredients,” Spears said. “It may look the same. It may have scallops instead of oysters. It may have things that look similar, but the taste, the feel, the essence just aren’t the same.”

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 11:22 AM with the headline "The educator/preacher: ‘It was stressful. It was indescribable’."