Saturday, as I flipped through copies of our newspapers from the days and weeks after Katrina, I couldn’t help but wonder what has become of the people who came to Natchez for help.

The first Natchez Red Cross shelter officially opened at 9 a.m. Aug. 28, 2005, but evacuees were in town before that. And they didn’t stop coming for days.

The first person I met was Arthur Perrot Jr. of New Orleans on the night before Katrina hit. And he had a bad feeling in his stomach.

“This is going to be the big one,” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do. You just accept whatever comes your way. We aren’t going to like it.”

I never saw Perrot again. He was quickly lost in a sea of what some estimated to be more than 10,000 coastal evacuees seeking refuge in the Miss-Lou for weeks.

For a reporter, life in Natchez in the days after Katrina was both immensely rewarding and equally disappointing.

Everywhere I turned there was a story to tell, and every story grabbed the readers’ heart.

But at the same time, we had no choice but to hop from story to story, rarely following up on folks such as Arthur Perrot.

Five years later, I’m still wondering how the story ended.

But that story is — yes, present tense — far too big for one newspaper to tell, for while the coastal areas had the damage, Natchez had their people.

Our story was one of separation, uncertainty and loss. But it was temporary.

The evacuees who came to Natchez stayed longer than they’d planned, yes, but most of them did, eventually, leave.

Some scattered around the country, but many went back home. Coastal newspapers are telling their stories today.

Each day in the immediate aftermath of the storm, our newspaper staff tried to tackle the story from two angles. We were suddenly serving two very different audiences — thousands of evacuees and thousands of area residents. And the story of Katrina touched both sets.

While New Orleans evacuee Denise Cousin reunited for the first time with her pregnant daughter — due any day — via telephone in the First Baptist Natchez church office, Natchez residents watched, listened and sobbed.

As a truckload of FEMA ice came into town, Natchez resident Davis Bunch and others volunteered their time to unload it.

And as dozens of evacuees staying at Parkway Baptist Church joined the Sunday morning worship service, locals shared their pews.

The story of Katrina in the Miss-Lou certainly had two faces.

One of those faces is still here today. The volunteers, average Joes and anyone else that came in contact with even just one, single evacuee will never forget what life was like in the days after Katrina.

Locals who spent time with the victims of the storm will tell you the event changed their own lives — for the better.

The Miss-Lou learned from Arthur Perrot, Denise Cousin and even Bob the goat who evacuated to a local vet’s office.

We learned from their experiences; we learned what to do in a pinch; we learned to love.

For the Miss-Lou, Katrina was a fleeting moment. Sure, hundreds of locals worked hard, sacrificed and changed lives during August, September and October 2005.

Though a few stayed, most of the evacuees left town, taking the story with them.

Our area didn’t see significant damage; but we did see a tremendous amount of people.

In other words, Natchez got the best of both worlds. For that, Katrina and her stories were a blessing.

Julie Cooper is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or julie.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.