By host Tom Ashbrook:

It is springtime here in the city of New Orleans again – the second spring now since the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina poured through this city in August of 2005.

The nineteen months since Katrina have been a massive challenge to the engineers who have struggled to drain and dry and defend and rebuild this city.

But those months have also been an awesome challenge to the human heart. Thousands have not returned. And those here still struggle with what happened and what’s to come.

This hour On Point: we go to the heart of New Orleans, with a preacher, a Creole chef and a jazz man – to listen to the soul of the city now.

Guests:

Tom Watson, Senior Pastor, Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries, which was founded by his grandfather and today has 500 members

Leah Chase, Co-owner and chef at the landmark Dooky Chase restaurant, which will reopen next month and has operated in New Orleans since 1939.

Don Marshall, Executive director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, which promotes and runs the Jazz and Heritage Festival held on the last weekend in April. He has been at the center of New Orleans’ art, music and theater scene since the early 1970s.