This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Draper • It's not that Desmond and Deshawn Sanders don't miss New Orleans, its culture, food and people.
But the twins, who turn 25 next week, don't want to return until they've made something of themselves, until they are men who have met their goals, who can make their mother proud.
The Sanders twins, then just teenagers, were among the 600 or so New Orleans residents who took refuge in Utah in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The storm made landfall Aug. 29, and the first planeload of 152 evacuees arrived in Utah on a chartered JetBlue plane the night of Sept. 3, 2005. Several Utah National Guard planes brought more evacuees the next day, and Utah housed them at a shelter at the Guard's Camp Williams.
At the peak of its three-week existence, the shelter had 583 Katrina evacuees.
A couple hundred left within days by bus and plane for other states, where they had family or job opportunities. Little by little over the next decade, most of the other evacuees returned to Louisiana, if not to their flooded homes in New Orleans.
The twins' story is different.
Not only did they come to Utah by a different route — they were rescued, along with their mother and sister, by an Ogden man who took them home to his family — the Sanders twins also stayed in Utah.
Desmond and Deshawn graduated from St. Joseph's Catholic High School in Ogden in 2008, and earned degrees at The Art Institute of Salt Lake City in 2012 and 2013, Deshawn in culinary arts and Desmond in digital film media.
They live together in an apartment in Draper, with their cats Storm and Rogue, near the art institute campus. Both work 60-hour weeks to save money for their dreams.
Desmond wants to buy his own film equipment and start a film-editing business. He's working on two screenplays, including one for a Web series set in New Orleans, while doing freelance film editing and managing a dollar store. Deshawn is a chef at an Asian restaurant, and is saving money to buy a food truck that will serve Cajun food.
"I want to bring a little bit of my childhood to them," Deshawn says.
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Out of New Orleans • Wanda Sanders and her boys do not recall precisely when they arrived in Utah. Much of that time is a blur. The twins think it was just before their 15th birthday on Sept. 11.
Their New Orleans home, which once belonged to Wanda Sanders' grandfather, was in a rough neighborhood near the Louisiana Superdome.
It suffered extreme wind damage, but they didn't stay to watch it flood when the levees broke.
Wanda, Desmond, Deshawn and their sister, Jamie, went briefly to the Superdome and then to stay with a woman in a less-damaged neighborhood. Wanda had met her at an aid station.
Wanda called a toll-free hotline, and volunteers there connected her with a man from Utah who was looking for someone to help.
Craig Keyes, then of Ogden, had driven into the destruction left by Katrina, and was being warned to get out before the second storm, Hurricane Rita, arrived. So the Sanders family, with not much more than the clothes they were wearing, climbed into Keyes' rented Ford Expedition and left New Orleans behind.
Rather than take a direct route to Utah, though, Keyes made it an adventure, Desmond remembers. He took them to Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Tennessee, and then to Texas, Arkansas and Kansas.
For the kids, it was a blast. "He made the aftermath of Katrina feel like a Disney film," Desmond says.
For their mother, it was nerve-wracking. "I was saying, 'Can we just get to the city? My nerves is getting bad!' "
Keyes' wife, Kate Keyes, insisted her husband bring the Sanders home instead of to Ogden's homeless shelter, as they'd once planned. The Keyes converted a living area into a bedroom for the twins, and put Wanda and Jamie in the bedroom of a daughter who was away at college.
The Keyes have since left Ogden and now live in Washington state.
Over the next few weeks, a steady stream of well-wishers from the neighborhood and Ogden-area churches came to the door with food, clothing and bedding, Wanda remembers. "The phone was ringing off the hook."
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Kindness of strangers • Soon, the Red Cross helped the family move to an apartment.
At a Subway sandwich shop one day, the workers and customers recognized Wanda from a newspaper story and made a fuss. Another customer insisted on paying for her meal.
"I felt like a queen," she says. An embarrassed queen. "I'm a hard worker, and everything I ever want or need, I work hard for."
She also remembers the kindness of people like the owners of Cutrubus Motors, who gave her a car, paid for insurance and promised free repairs for two years.
That happened the same day she'd ridden up and down Washington Boulevard on a UTA bus, crying and despairing of finding a job after she failed a skills test involving nuts and bolts.
She also remembers people from Hill Air Force Base, working through Washington Heights Church, bringing a Christmas tree and gifts galore for her and her children.
"At first, I didn't mind the attention. It felt pretty good," Wanda says. "But after a while, people would come up and start snapping pictures. I would drop my head down."
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'I'm missing home' • There were also ugly moments, such as when she took her boys for haircuts before they began school. The stylists kept taking customers who came in after the family, and Wanda soon realized they didn't want to cut her sons' hair.
As she stormed out, the manager ran after her, explaining, " 'We was never trained to do African-Americans' hair!' " Wanda recalls.
Wanda also found she could not work as an emergency dispatcher, as she had in New Orleans, because she was listed back home as having abandoned her job.
She fell on black ice her first winter in Utah, injuring her back and forcing her to quit a temporary job she had enjoyed.
Eventually, Wanda did find work as the cook at St. Anne's homeless shelter, and as an early-childhood development teacher at Hill Air Force Base.
"After a couple years, I'm missing home, I'm missing home, I'm missing home, I'm missing home," she says.
After Jamie, her youngest, graduated from Ben Lomond High School, the two of them returned to Louisiana.
Like many Katrina evacuees, they did not return to New Orleans, where their home has long since been demolished.
In Baton Rouge for four years now, Wanda is married and drives a Capitol City Transit bus for disabled and senior passengers.
Jamie finished cosmetology school and is now taking business courses. She's about to get married, and her first child is due next month.
Wanda says she returns to Utah for visits and has friends here she'll never forget. "I talk about that state so much! I have so many people in my corner who helped me out through my journey."
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'A second chance' • Desmond is abashed when he remembers how he felt during Katrina.
"Nothing like this had ever happened in my life before," he says. "I know it sounds bad, but it was exciting, especially for a 14-year-old."
When Keyes offered the family a chance to go to Utah, Desmond had no idea where that was. He knew Salt Lake City as the home of the Jazz, formerly of New Orleans. But the state of Utah? "I'd be like, 'Is that that place by Canada?' " He wanted to go, though.
"It felt like a chance to start fresh, and who doesn't like that?" Desmond recalls.
"In Louisiana, there are swamps, spooky people, great culture and music. But here it was so pretty! I felt I was on the set of 'Lord of the Rings' for a minute," he says.
He and his brother had to give up football, but they played basketball and tennis. Desmond ran track, going to state-level competition, for St. Joseph's. The twins teamed up on a documentary about Katrina for a film class. They made good friends.
Two months after Katrina, Desmond says, the truth of his city's devastation sunk in. "It hit me: 'Some of my people are still there, going through God knows what.' "
He felt guilty that he'd been helped while others suffered. After a while, he turned his sadness into a motivation to make something of himself. "I'd been given a second chance," says Desmond.
Deshawn says he fought constantly at school in New Orleans, though that wasn't his nature.
"Had I stayed, I probably would not have graduated high school, just because of the environment I was in," he says. "Katrina was actually more of a blessing for me and my family than it was a tragedy."
The twins say they may not always resist the tug of home, of Louisiana.
"I didn't realize how much I love my city until I left it," Desmond says. "I didn't realize how different it was from every other city until I left it."
"Oh my God, I miss it!" Deshawn says. "The culture, the food, but mostly, the people."
The two talk about eventually returning to help their mother, who was in high school and unwed when she had them.
She raised them alone, albeit with the help of her own mother.
"I don't want to go back until I've made something of myself," Desmond says.
"That's actually the reason for both of us [to stay]," Deshawn adds.
"Mom sacrificed her youth to take care of us. Our dream is to repay our debt to her. As a son, I want to make her really, really proud."
Twitter: @KristenMoulton