While reporting on Hurricane Katrina in 2005, CNN’s Anderson Cooper witnessed a dead person atop a vehicle on a flooded street in New Orleans. That person turned out to be Jerry Peters. Cooper visits with Peters’ nephew Pastor Jerry Darby in this deeply emotional story.

New Orleans

A journalist recounts the harrowing experience of covering Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, describing the discovery of a man's body on top of a car in the floodwaters. The victim, later identified as Jerry Peters, was a lifelong New Orleans resident whose family has deep roots in the city. Years after the disaster, the journalist met with Peters' nephew, Pastor Jerry Darby, learning more about the man behind the tragic image and the family's loss. The story underscores the lasting personal and communal impact of the hurricane, as well as the importance of remembering individual stories amid large-scale tragedies.

Revisiting horrific memory covering Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago

No one who was there at the time could believe what we were seeing. Bodies in the streets, human beings decomposing for days. About a week after the storm hit, I was in a small boat on a flooded street in New Orleans. We came across the body of a man laying on top of a car. I've never forgotten the moment. It's a horrific sight. There's a man dead on top of a car just a few feet away. He drowned in the floodwaters. He's terribly decomposed. There's no way to tell how many people have died here in New Orleans. A lot of the people who no doubt drowned, drowned inside their homes, and their homes are still flooded, and rescuers haven't been able to get to them. It's a sickening sight, and it is just incredible to think that you're in the United States. I've never seen anything like this in the United States. I've seen in Rwanda the genocide in Sri Lanka after the tsunami, but a week after a storm to still have bodies exposed, just laying out dead, it's mind-boggling. For years, the memory of that man on that car haunted me. Then in 2015, we learned his name, Jerry Peters. It turned out his family went back generations in New Orleans, and we went back to find them. Jerry Peters' great-grandfather founded a small church on this plot of land in New Orleans' 7th Ward back in 1918. His name was Joseph Davis. Today, the church is run by Jerry Peters' nephew, Pastor Jerry Darby. Hello. Hey, it's so nice to meet you, Pastor. Pleasure to meet you, sir. Thanks so much for having us. It turns out Pastor Darby was named after his uncle, Jerry Peters. This is Jerry Peters, dressed as a Mardi Gras Indian. It's the only photo of him that survived the storm. Jerry grew up in New Orleans, one of 11 kids. Jerry grew up in New Orleans, one of 11 kids, and he had two children of his own. What was your uncle like? Very, very loving person, very, very supportive. He was my baseball coach, of course. He taught you how to play baseball? Taught me how to play baseball, taught me how to play football. The morning of the storm, Pastor Darby called his uncle. The rest of the family were evacuating to Houston. It was our understanding that he was going to leave that evening, and obviously we were quite optimistic and hopeful that he would be well. Do you know why he didn't get out? He just chose not to, thinking that in the evening time it would still be conducive to his being able to get out. One thing I'll also mention about him, he was a non-swimmer. He didn't know how to swim. He didn't swim at all, and he was deathly afraid of water. Jerry Peter's body was eventually recovered on September 11th. When the family got word, Pastor Darby was devastated. They didn't know how he died or how he ended up floating in the water six blocks from his home. Pastor Darby didn't know that his uncle's body was found on top of a car until now. I saw your uncle, and I always worried as a reporter that I didn't want family members seeing their loved ones on television. I thought so much about him, and it's why when we were able to track you down, I wanted to meet you, because there's some things you never forget, and some images you never forget, and seeing your uncle is something I'll never forget. To know that you vividly, in a very picturesque way from what I'm gathering, you saw him yourself on the car, that does bring some measure of comfort to at least know that somebody saw him, and he wasn't just on some heat pile. To not be able to put a name to the person that we were seeing was one of the things that always struck me as particularly painful, and so to be able to finally put a name to your uncle is, for me, powerful.

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