ST. CHARLES PARISH, La. — A woman in St. Charles Parish needs your help to fulfill her late father’s dream: Reuniting a family with old photographs he found after Hurricane Katrina.
They were found on the side of the road right after the storm.
“On the bottom of one of the photos it says ‘Love forever, Lilian,” Tracy Usea said.
Right now, that’s all she has to go on.
“A family that is hopefully from New Orleans. They appear to be,” she said. “I’m just trying to get them back to her. To the family.”
Usea’s late father Perry Loupe used to work for the state and would often find things on the side of the road. She says he tried to get these photos into the right hands for a long time, but came up short.
“He had asked me to do it a long time ago, but I never had the time,” she said.
But now, she does. Usea recently re-discovered the old photos and put them up on social media, asking everyone she could think of if they know the family in front of the lens.
“People lost a lot, houses, roofs, cars, everything and for these photos to make it back to the family especially if that person is no longer with them, its irreplaceable,” she said. “You can’t replace memories.”
Usea hopes that finding the owners will fulfill her father’s legacy.
“Everybody has a person. He was my person,” she said. “He was the one that I always called. He was always there for me and this is something I could do for him beyond the grave.”
Usea told us that she’s gotten several responses since posting the photos online, but so far there hasn’t been a match.
If you recognize the photos, reach out to Tracy Usea through her Facebook page here.
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