An interview of Charles and Thirawer Duplessis of Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church Conducted in New Orleans on December 20, 2007 By Mary Catherine (MC) Harper of Defiance College MC: Thirawer, would you describe your background in terms of family and community and when you grew up. Thirawer: I have three sisters and two brothers, and grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward area of New Orleans. I graduated from high school in 1971 and the same year married Charles Williams Duplessis. We have three children, Angel the oldest, Violet and Tangela: two other children Michael and Janet that adopted us along the way, six grandchildren by birth, one deceased and eight from our adopted children. My mother and father were married for forty-four years when my mother passed. And my father passed in 2006. We still lived in the Lower Ninth Ward until Katrina hit. And we re now in Tuskegee, Alabama. MC: So New Orleans has been your home your whole life? Thirawer: Yes, except for two years when Charles was in the service and he was stationed in Colorado Springs, Colorado. That was when our first daughter was born, while he served at Fort Carson. MC: What about you, Charles, in terms of your background. Did you also grow up in New Orleans? Charles: I was born and raised here except for my time in the service, and now we are in Tuskegee, Alabama: going back and forth, from Tuskegee to New Orleans. MC: And the reason you are trying to get back here to this city, is it because of your roots in New Orleans? Charles: It plays a role. But the major reason is because we believe God has called us back despite what we ve gone through with Katrina and Rita. MC: Is that true for you, Thirawer, God s call to be back here? Thirawer: I would say yes, because when Charles was called to the ministry, we were going through a lot of turmoil in our marriage. And Charles spoke to God and told Him if He was going to call him, He needed to let me know. And God did let me know, so we re in it together for the long haul. MC: So, when you talk about your work in New Orleans and the need to be here, is it about your vocation? Charles: Yes.
MC: What did that feel like to have a vocation, to be called to be a minister? Charles: I guess, to me, it probably is almost indescribable. I had a sense of peace once I decided to do what God was calling me to do, and that I was to go into preaching the Gospel. And then I had the same assurance when He called me to go into pastoral ministry, the same peace, same understanding that this is what God called me to do, backed up not only by feelings and emotions but coinciding with The Word of God. He always gave me a word whenever He called me: and when He called me to pastoral ministry, He spoke to me, through His Word. And it has been a shared ministry, as Thirawer said earlier, because I believe, for my part, that if He was calling me, He was also calling my family. Not to do the work but to have the understanding of my call. That s why I prayed and asked God to show her in a plain and focused way. Since then she has never said God didn t call you. The focus was there. MC: Thirawer, could you talk about that experience? Thirawer: Well, we look at our marriage not as two separate people but one that God joined together. But with the calling to the ministry it was rough. We were going through some difficulties in our marriage, and that night before I went to bed, I prayed like I never prayed before and asked God if it was me doing something wrong in the marriage to show me, and if it was him doing something wrong, still show me. And God showed me that He was calling Charles to the ministry. And in the vision that I had that night, I got to church late on Sunday and my aunt was standing on the outside and she told me, You missed it, we had good church, and we had a new preacher. And I told her, I know, because Charles Williams preached. And to me that was how God let me know that He was calling Charles into the ministry. And when he was called to The Hill of Zion Baptist Church his first church (he served as interim pastor of our home church, The Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church), my mother gave him some encouraging words. She said, Don t lean to the right, nor to the left, but stay on the straight and narrow. And I know wherever we are I don t have to worry about him. A lady came up to me and talked about going into counsel with my husband, and I told her I trusted my husband before I got here, and I m going to trust him even more now that I m here. People will tell you some things about preachers, but I don t have to worry about that. MC: What really happened to you during Katrina and right after? Thirawer: The morning before we left, our oldest daughter, Angel, came to the house, and she said, Mama, you need to see all the lines at the gas station. I said, For what? She said, The hurricane, it s on its way. And I said, Girl, you re wrong, because when I left work yesterday, my co-workers said we d see each other on Monday, and the hurricane was on its way to Florida. She said, You haven t listened to the news lately. But Charles and I were getting ready for a function at the church, and we continued to get ready. One of my little sisters called me and asked what we were going to do about the storm coming, and I said, I don t know; I ll let you know later. So after she called, I turned the TV on to see exactly what was going on with the storm. And the mayor from Kenner on TV and he stated
there was a mandatory evacuation of Kenner. Mayor Nagin came on after and he said that the storm is going to be very bad and you need to leave the city, and those of you who aren t going to leave the city, go into your attic, and be sure to bring a hammer, an axe, so that way you can cut a hole and get out. And my little sister called back and she said, What are you going to do? And I said I d call right back. Then I called my niece in Alabama and I asked her could she get us some rooms. And she said, How many? I told her about five. And she called back and said she couldn t get any rooms at Auburn, Opelika, or Montgomery, which would have been cheaper for us, but she was able to get some at the Conference Center. I knew they had rooms at The Kellogg Conference Center, at The Tuskegee University campus, Charles and I had stayed there before. And so we planned this for our immediate family: my dad, my sister, my brother, and my children and grandkids, and some church members. After we started calling around and telling family members, when I called my aunt because she didn t have transportation she told us we could pick her up. My uncle, who was crippled, at first said he wasn t coming with us, but afterward he decided to come on with us, instead of staying in The City (of New Orleans) with one of his nephews. Our plan was to leave at 6:00 that Sunday morning, but we didn t leave until 10:30 a.m. because every family member we called said, Wait! Let us throw some things together so we can come. Some of them we called said they didn t have any money and had to stay here. But we said, Now is not the time to worry about money; we need to get out of here; we are a close-knit family, and we needed to stick together. So at 10:20 before we left, we stood in front of my sister s house and we all held hands and we prayed that God would lead us all out safely. And He did. We left in eleven cars with thirty eight people. Eighteen of them were children, four of the children were for a friend of the family, we had them because she had an emergency surgery on that Friday. So, we had to take her kids along with us. And once we got to Tuskegee we couldn t locate her. We didn t know where she was, for at least 10 days, until one day she was able to get through on my daughter s cell phone, and find out where we were: she later joined us there. Our journey to Tuskegee was rough because gas stations closed doors in our face, refused to sell us gas, saying they only had gas for their regular customers. One gas station told us, We re not accepting cash any more; we re only taking credit cards and debit cards, as if to say we didn t have one. But God blessed us, and we had that too. It usually took us four and a half hours to get to Alabama, but it took us fourteen and a half to fifteen hours to get there. We left here, got to Alabama safely. My niece met us along the highway, and she brought us to the university and we were all able to get rooms. And in the process, after one or two days, money was running out. We talked to the manager, Mr. Lee Davis, and he informed the president of the school that he had people there from New Orleans, and they reduced the rate of the room. Then one church in particular, and their pastor, The Rev. Osby, heard that we were in Tuskegee. And his church usually goes to a conference, but he said instead of his church going to the conference that year, the money they would spend on the conference they decided to spend helping us get food and pay one or two nights of the hotel for us. I thought that was great. If it hadn t been for the churches in Alabama, we would have been in bad shape. Every day a different church fed us. There were over 600 hundred peoples in the Tuskegee area, who were
from the Gulf Coast. For about two weeks, the school system came and picked us up, sent a school bus to pick us up for lunch and bring us back. And on that Tuesday, some of our adults went to register the kids for school. By the grace of God two of our nephews have graduated from high school, in 2006, in Alabama. And the other kids, it was just the thing for them to get up every morning and get to school. With eighteen kids, only two not of school age, well... [laughter]! The ages when we left New Orleans were from two weeks old to seventy-six years old. So we had a two-week old and a five-month old. Every other child was in school, by that Wednesday. And the church we attended in Alabama adopted the whole family and put us under their wing. And the pastor is a bishop now, Bishop Roy L. Copeland Sr. He s just a jewel I mean the whole church itself, Jubilee Christian Fellowship International. When we go back to see them, they get all excited: when we get into town, they ask, How long are you here for? And sometimes we have to leave the next day, so they say, It s always a joy. I miss them when I m not there, but God gave us a job to do here in New Orleans, and we have to do the job God called us to do. MC: And what you are called to do here at this time? Thirawer: Number one, our calling is to get the church back up. God has even blessed us in that area. We are working with a group called Churches Supporting Churches, and what that does is bring together thirty-six pastors in New Orleans and the surrounding area, in Slidell, the West Bank, St. Bernard, and Metairie. And we are reaching out across the United States, we have a Canadian church, and the world trying tot get 360 churches: ten churches to partner with one church, to be able to take on that church for about two to three years until they can get back on their feet. We ve been together about two years, and God is beginning to open doors. Next, if it had not been for Katrina, we would not have met you. We would not have known of Defiance, Ohio, and Defiance College. God knows what to do and when to do it. We thank God. I say Katrina was good and it was bad. It brought the best out of some people and the worst out of other people. For us it is a slow process, but it is a good slow process, because we ve been places that we never would have been before. And we are working with Churches Supporting Churches. There s a church out of Flossmoor, Illinois, that has agreed to come aboard to partner to help build our fellowship. And by the grace of God that will start in April of 2008. MC: Charles, what would you like to add to that? How you are feeling about the here and now in New Orleans, about Churches Supporting Churches, about your aspirations? Charles: Before the hurricane we were doing ministries mostly with children, and the adults, in the community. Katrina has shown us that we need to expand that, and now we re working with different churches from different denominations, different areas of ministry. It was Churches Supporting Churches that brought that together. As we go about rebuilding Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church, we ve gained associations and contacts, different pastors, different denominations. That s the most important thing, to see the churches coming together as the body of Christ ought to be: not only Catholic and Baptist, but also crossing denominational lines. The ministry we re trying to do is to broaden and build capacity in churches. The idea is for the original thirty-six churches to rebuild, and those thirty-six churches to reach out to other
churches to build capacity. And then look and see what the community needs, and try not to duplicate services. If a church has a community center, then another church doesn t need to do that. They can come into partnership with each other; they can enhance each other s ministry. If they have a nursery, a drug rehab ministry, a tutoring center, computer training, whatever they have, we re trying not to duplicate that but to broaden the scope of the area of that ministry. Each church has a responsibility, or call or mission. And we try to find out what that mission is by talking to the pastor and the congregations, and even to community groups. An example is the grass cutting in the home lots in the area. One of our ministries with student groups like yours and other student groups is cutting grass down on Saturdays, so people won t have liens put against their homes and eventually lose their homes because the liens are so high. The problem began because people are out of town and their houses have been torn down in the area. People have permits to redo their homes, but the same city agency issued permits to others for rebuilding the same homes. As pastors and a community, we brought a resolution to City Hall to put a moratorium on these duplicate permits, but then the grass cutting by the city came into force. So we clear brush together. Now in Churches Supporting Churches we are looking at how we can restore homes, how we can get people into homes, whether it is rental or home ownership, but mostly home ownership at an affordable price, or as The Rev. Donald Boutee (a CSC pastor) says deeply affordable. Everybody is not of the median income level. There are people well below that, so we are trying to get funds for them to buy their own homes, because we believe when you own your own home, you have more stability, more of a stake in the area you live in. That is one thing we are doing, and then trying to build Capacity building, Community building and Advocacy in the churches with the pastors and members. This is what our focus is, not only rebuilding our ministry and our fellowship that has been scattered throughout America, but also to focus on what we can do, as Dr. King said, for the beloved community : not only the Christians churches, but all people in the community. We need to better our communities, so we can go forward. MC: Talking about your aspirations for the future and your message, what message would you like to give to communities back in Ohio? What would you like to leave us with? Charles: That we have a strong hope. Our faith has not been diminished maybe tarnished but then we look in the eyes of people like the Defiance family coming in, looking at their hearts and seeing that they do have a concern. The message is that if you have a concern, if you have a heart for people, hear what we re saying. Again, everybody cannot come here and see, but by words, by voice, by some kind of action, everybody can get involved. We have learned that there are disasters all over the world. This disaster hit us in a direct and terrible way, and our idea is to rebuild our community. We need help. The federal government, state government, city government have never faced this. There has not been a coming together, in the church community. If I may use this terminology, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was, is ground zero for The Church. We ask that you come and help a ministry or an organization to better itself not just to protest, or not be like some coming down to city hall for destructive reasons but to help us rebuild this city in a better way.
By building this city, we are also helping to show people how to rebuild in every area of America when disaster hits. And it has happened, though it has never happened in this dramatic fashion. So, bring the word to legislatures, to the federal government, to your community, to your family, to your church, that there are people down here who have a mind to rebuild, and we need help along the way. And it s not always financial, and I want to emphasize that. There are talents out there that we don t have, knowledge that we don t have. And you may be able to come and help us. And again, it is not coming to take over. It s not coming to see us as puppets on a string but to see us as people who need help, and you have the expertise and the ability to come alongside us. We don t want a hand out; we want a hand up. If we all can do that here, I think it can be done anywhere in America or anywhere in the world. We re known throughout the world as a giving people, so to see the hurt that is still going on in the cities of America everywhere I go there is hurt I say if we can t fix it here, how can we fix it in Iraq or Iran or Pakistan, wherever! That s our goal, to bring in people who have a mind to see this city become a better city in America. MC: And you, Thirawer, what would you say? Thirawer: We have the right to fight for what we believe in, and we believe that as the scripture said, All things work together for good for those that love Him and for those that are the called according His purpose. Some people have lost faith in God altogether because they figured the flooding shouldn t have happened. And as a person who has been in Hurricane Betsy and now Hurricane Katrina and Rita, I often wonder why (how) back in 1965 they could get the water out so fast but in the year 2005 it had to linger on for almost a month. Something is wrong. So I would say, Don t let what happened to our city happen to your city. And by that I mean, if you have levees, be sure that they re in good condition, because what happened down here in New Orleans shouldn t have happened, and it s because of men and government that this happened. In the process of it, we ve lost everything. We lost our home, we lost our jobs, and we lost our church building. We even lost loved ones. We had two loved ones drown in the storm. In the process since the storm, we have lost four other members of our family, and one that left out with us (all of them from heart attacks). I know we all have our appointed time to die, but Katrina was a wake-up call. Charles and I used to pray every day, and we would ask God to remove the drugs from our community. We would ask God to stop the killing, and as I said when I was at Defiance earlier, I didn t mean for Him to do it like that. But He gave New Orleans a cleansing, a purifying, and sometimes we need to take inventory of our own lives and see if we need to be purged: on a quarterly basis, on a yearly basis, whatever. But whatever we do, we can count it all joy and we feel joy today: To God be the glory for the things He has done and for what He will do one day. Although it happened to us today, it may happen to somebody else tomorrow. And if we do what we re supposed to do down here, when it happens in another city, in another state, we can go and reach out to them and say, We know how you feel. We ve been there, and this is how we made it. We made it first of all by keeping our faith in God, and secondly, we stuck together as a family, as a community.