[Buckskin86]

National title game brings Abdallah family back to New Orleans to finish their story

By Tom Archdeacon
Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2007

He was passed out cold on the attic floor, overcome by exhaustion, by the fumes of a nearby leaking gas pipe, by the sense he just wanted a moment's respite from the overwhelming destruction, the bullet-riddled anarchy, the seemingly hopeless consequence that surrounded him on all sides.

By nightfall, if the water lapping at the attic floorboards didn't kill him, the looters already shooting at him likely would.

That was Wesam Abdallah's predicament after the winds of Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, and the floodwaters from the broken levees submerged much of the city.

He was trapped in the attic of the Abdallah family's combination grocery, restaurant, butcher shop, clothing store, video-game room and check-cashing kiosk ? the ghetto equivalent of a Wal-Mart, a place local folks called Hulio's ? at the corner of LaSalle and Sixth, just across the street from the notorious Magnolia Projects in uptown New Orleans' Third Ward.

"He would have died," Nader Abdallah, Wesam's youngest brother and the Ohio State Buckeyes' 295-pound starting defensive tackle said before practice the other day. "But that's when something unbelievable happened. He'll tell you, it was a miracle."

After some initial hesitation, Wesam ? or Sam as he's known to longtime friends ? did tell it by phone from Houston, where he now lives: "I haven't told this to anybody but my family and friends. It was really crazy.

"I'd gotten dizzy and passed out. All of a sudden, though, I had a bird flapping its wings in my face. A big hole had been ripped in the roof, and that bird flew in and woke me up. That's when it hit me ? I had to get out of there or I'd be dead."

National title game brings Abdallah family back to New Orleans to finish their story