In the early 1990s, Mickey Joseph led the Nebraska Cornhuskers on the football field. Now, in the wake of natural disaster, the Lousiana native is stepping into a new leadership role.

BY COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star

I want to come home, Mama.

The boy said these words, over and over, into his teacher’s cell phone.

The teacher, former Husker quarterback Mickey Joseph, watched the boy’s face and listened.

They stood outside a cabin in a cluster of cabins bordered by the woods and water of the Florida Panhandle. It’s a 4-H camp, temporary site of their school that used to be in New Orleans.

It was after supper. The outdoor lights kept the darkness of the early October night from flooding the cabins. The school had started classes there just a week before.

I want to come home, Mama.

There’s no home to come home to, Mickey heard Mama say.

The boy knew Mama was staying with his big brother in Baton Rouge, in a two-bedroom apartment with more than a dozen family members. But he’s only 13, one of the school’s youngest kids. To him, Mama was turning him away.

Mickey remembers the night well, he says now, weeks later. And he remembers what happened next.

How the boy handed him the phone and started to walk.

Down the dirt road.

Under the canopy of trees.

Into the dark.

Mickey followed, a few steps behind.

This is the best place for you, Darwin. You’ve got to understand that.

The boy kept walking toward the highway, the one that went home to Mama.

v v v

Mickey Joseph grew up in the New Orleans area.

He became a high school football hero there, then quarterback for the University of Nebraska. He lettered four years for the Huskers and was a starter on and off for three years.

After graduating in 1991, he coached at colleges, then took a job as a seventh-grade history teacher and gym teacher and coach at Desire Street Academy.

This is his first year at the all-boys school in the Desire neighborhood of New Orleans. The school is in the Ninth Ward, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the nation and the area hit hardest by the flood.

Before Katrina, Mickey was just “Coach Mickey” to the boys of Desire Street Academy.

But since Katrina, with the school now in the Florida woods  four hours east of New Orleans, Mickey has taken on a new role.

Dad.

“I’m a dorm dad.”

He laughs.

“Actually, they say I’m the dorm grandpa, because I’m a supervisor of the dorm dads.”

The Ninth Ward is a rough place, Mickey says. But these boys aren’t rough, just because they come from there. They’re just boys.

Boys who want to go home.

There were about 190 boys at the seventh- through 12th-grade academy. About 75 came to the camp along Choctawhatchee Bay. Mickey has noticed most don’t walk by the water. Few of them fish or canoe.

Most of the boys are traumatized in some way. Some stayed at the Superdome for days. Some sat on roofs. Some lost loved ones.

One boy had eight family members drown.

When the boys need someone to talk to, they find Mickey or the other teachers. Often it’s in the evenings, after classes and football practice. They sit on the porch of Mickey’s cabin.

God won’t give you anything you can’t handle, Mickey tells them. And you have to keep going. Take it day by day. But keep going.

“They showed a lot of courage to just come here and continue their education,” he says. “But they’re really out of their environment. And I’m going from just teaching them to now living with them. So I’ve been really able to find out a lot of things about them. I’m literally raising them. So some days are good. Some days are bad.

“But there’s never a day where you say, ‘I want to quit.’”

The academy found its temporary home thanks to former New Orleans Saints quarterback Danny Wuerffel — the quarterback the 1995 Husker team beat 62-24 in the Fiesta Bowl for NU’s fourth national title.

Wuerffel, Desire Street’s director of development, was born in nearby Pensacola. He played for the University of Florida. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1996, leading the school to the national title.

He made some calls and found the camp, which belonged to the University of Florida.

He says Mickey has done a great job with the boys at the camp and as leader of the dorm dads. But he has one beef with him.

How he brings up the Huskers’ 1995 victory every now and then.

He chuckled.

“I’ve got not much to say to that. What can you say?”

The academy’s building in New Orleans needs to be gutted. Flood water damaged most everything inside, though it’s structurally sound.

The big question now for the school’s other leaders, though, is whether the Desire Street neighborhood will even be a neighborhood again. Most homes were damaged beyond repair.

Mickey says the school may have to move to Baton Rouge.

After the flood, Mickey and other teachers rounded up the scattered boys and drove them to pickup sites. Buses and private planes brought them to Florida. School began Oct. 3.

By the end of the first week, many wanted to go home.

Mickey was used to being their teacher and coach. But now he’s telling them to pick up their shoes. And to get to bed at 10. And to wake up in time for breakfast and chapel and class and to clean the kitchen.

He doesn’t have to remind them to call home, though. He hands them his cell phone whenever they need it.

He doesn’t mind the huge bill for extra minutes. The boys need to hear from home, hard as it is sometimes.

Like that October night when young Darwin Pichon kept walking down the dirt road, heading for the highway.

v v v

Darwin kept walking.

He was heading home to his grandma’s house in the Ninth Ward and to his bedroom in Grandma’s house with his PlayStation and his TV.

He couldn’t understand why the flood had to come and change everything.

The water was dirty and dark and up to his throat as he carried his nephews and nieces out of Grandma’s house.

He slept a night on the bridge, where he saw people go into seizures and die in front of him. He saw bodies floating.

Coach Mickey has been telling him not to worry about the past, just worry about the future.

Darwin, this is the best place for you.

Sometimes when Darwin wakes up, for a moment he’s home in his bed in New Orleans. When he realizes he’s not, he feels angry.

Sometimes it feels like he’s stranded on an island, and he needs to find a way off it.

v v v

Mickey was living at his parents’ home on the West Bank. He drove out of New Orleans on the sunny Sunday before the storm hit.

His parents’ home lost its roof. They’re staying with family in Baton Rouge.

He’d be there, too, helping out, if it weren’t for the boys.

Staying at the camp is rough on him, he says. But he’s 37. He’s lived all over the nation.

For many of these boys, it’s their first time out of Louisiana.

One thing that has helped make life seem normal for them is football.

This is Desire Street Academy’s first football season. Practice began after the boys moved to Florida. At first, the boys had no helmets or pads or equipment. They ran drills on a big, bumpy field by the cabins.

They traveled on buses four hours back to the New Orleans area for their games. They played three, losing their first two and winning their final game Nov. 5.

After each game, Mickey watched the hugging and tears as families reunited. Sometimes, it’d take over an hour before the buses could return the boys to Florida.

Darren Yarbrough is 18. He’s a starter on the team.

Coach Mickey means a lot to him. Sometimes they sit on a bench outside Coach Mickey’s cabin and talk.

During the flood, Darren was trapped on the third floor of his apartment building, part of a housing project in the Ninth Ward. A neighbor gave him a boat ride to a church, where a helicopter rescued him from the roof.

He stayed at a shelter in San Antonio until one of the coaches came and got him.

Darren’s mom is in Jackson, Miss. The rest of his family is in Memphis, Tenn.

Football helps him cope, Darren says. Before each game, the players and coaches huddled on the sidelines. They prayed.

“Coach Mickey told us, ‘No matter what, just have fun. Just play every game like it’s your last.’

“And he told us he loved us. He told us that before every game, when we’re all circled up on the sidelines — the coaches, everybody.

“I think football helps us remember that we’re a family.”

Being away from home hasn’t been so hard on him. It’s almost like being in college.

But it’s been real hard on the younger boys, he says.

v v v

Not far from the highway, Darwin stopped.

He turned around and began walking back down the dirt road, beneath the canopy of trees, toward the cluster of cabins and the lights beside the dark water.

Back to Desire Street Academy.

Mickey watched, a few steps behind.

Darwin headed for his cabin, saying goodnight to the teacher who helped him get through another day without Mama.

v v v

Mama drove to New Orleans the other day.

She went to Grandma’s house.

She told him all about it on the phone, how the outside looked good, like nothing happened to it. But how the inside was messed up.

She told him his PlayStation was stuck on the wall like was glued there by all the mud. There was mold all around it.

She still doesn’t know what will happen, she told him. Or where their home will be.

“My mama says it’s good for me to be here. And she’s right,” Darwin says, taking a break from classes. “It’s like a new family. It feels like they’re my parents here.”

Thanksgiving break is coming. For the first time since coming to the camp, Darwin will travel that highway back home to Louisiana.

And Mama.

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.

Help for the academy

The boys of New Orleans’ Desire Street Academy, relocated for now to a 4-H camp in Florida, have many needs. To donate to them or the school, contact Desire Street Ministries, 1716 Mangum Road, Houston, Texas 77092 or go to www.desirestreet.org