Yearbook 2006

YEARBOOK 2006 documents the interrupted senior year of the 2006 graduating class from Benjamin Franklin High School in a post-Katrina New Orleans.

"I kept trying to think of what every one of us here had in common. Was it the blue tarps covering our roofs? Was it not having a roof at all? Was it the evil brown ring where the water crept up and ruined so many precious souvenirs and memories? Or was it the relief and the guilt of perhaps being one of those lucky enough to live in the random areas with no mold and only a few broken windows? The more I tried to think of concrete examples of what we all shared, the more I realized that what tied us all together was this: loss. We had all been grieving, together and separately, wherever we landed, in Houston, in Lafayette, in New Orleans, for the lives we took for granted and the lives we were forced to live during those uncertain and unreal four months.

Life, fate, destiny, and diligence: they have all given us a second chance. It is not often that something we lose returns to us."

-- an exercept from a speech given by senior Camile Bullock on January 17, 2006, the first day of school post-Katrina.