Two weeks ago, junior cross country runner Kevin Wong was the lone member of his immediate family away from home.

Now, he’s the only person with one.

Sure, his parents, 14-year-old brother Jason and dog Cucalou were among the first to evacuate New Orleans Aug. 28 in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina, arriving safely at Kevin’s grandparents’ house via car in Essex, Conn., Saturday night.

But the coastal New England town could hardly be called ‘home.’ Their lives are in complete disarray.

His father, Larry Wong, a lawyer, hopes to find a job teaching or in research at a university.

His mother, Hope Rune, an OBGYN doctor, isn’t sure if she wants to work.

Jason, who Kevin said his mother called ‘a little distraught,’ has had to restart his freshman year of high school, this time more than 1,400 miles from his friends.

And Cucalou, named after a street in New Orleans, suddenly has to share space with another dog. And they’re not getting along.

Then there’s Kevin.

Of course, he currently doesn’t really have a home in the true sense either. But he’s supposed to be living in Watson Hall right now. He has his clothes, his computer, his XBox, his iPod.

All that made the 22-hour trip to Connecticut in the family’s 2005 Toyota Sienna was four days’ worth of clothes, personal items, every household photograph and their insurance papers.

Kevin doesn’t know what to make of being the only one not uprooted.

‘It’s kind of surreal, since I wasn’t there and didn’t go through the evacuation,’ he said. ‘It’s like watching a movie almost.’

A mystery movie at that. The condition of their home is unclear.

The Wongs live near Audubon Park, right next to the Tulane campus, about four miles from the Superdome in the heart of the city.

A neighbor relieved them of their greatest fear over the weekend, reporting the four large pine trees in their front yard hadn’t succumbed to the 175-mile-per-hour winds and crushed the house.

But the neighbor did say there was damage to the roof – the extent of which is unknown – and she couldn’t tell if there had been any flooding because the water already receded. Since they live the farthest away from the levee breaks, Kevin thinks any flooding was limited to the first floor. The biggest question mark now, though, is whether looters struck.

They won’t know anything definitive for weeks. Neighbors and family friends will conduct a more thorough check when they get the chance.

Officials are currently projecting the city to be without drinking water, food and power for four months, which extends to roughly New Year’s Day, 2006.

‘It’s weird thinking that I don’t have a house to go back to for Christmas at the moment,’ Kevin said.

Kevin wishes he could have been there for the evacuation. He repeatedly calls his parents, who in turn repeatedly tell him, unsuccessfully, to stop.

He can’t help but worry. CNN beams endlessly on his roommate’s TV. The New York Times’ online edition continuously refreshes on his computer screen.

He only started to do homework after his family safely reached his grandparents’ Saturday night. Besides school, the only other outlet is daily cross country practice.

The first meet of the season is Saturday in Binghamton, but he doesn’t want to run just because of what he’s been through. Injuries have hampered both his seasons at SU, and he simply can’t wait to finally race healthy this year.

The support of his friends, teammates and coaches at SU has kept him in surprisingly good spirits. Not only did he want to thank them, but all of his friends’ parents who offered his family a place to stay.

Escaping to the movies has been another diversion. He enjoyed ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ last weekend, and more comedies are planned.

On the financial side, Syracuse is paying for his textbooks and course fees for his piano lessons and chemistry lab this semester, and might help next semester, too. The federal government is expected to eventually provide financial relief to families as well.

But to be sure, the shock is still there. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Kevin’s lived in New Orleans his whole life, evacuating only one other time. They stayed in a hospital in New Orleans for a few nights after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992. But there was no damage to their home. Despite countless storms over the years, it’s never flooded.

Actually, hurricanes are usually a blast. He and his friends used to have several ‘hurricane parties’ a year. They loved splashing around in the street instead of going to school.

Now, hurricanes are nightmares. He wonders about the condition of a few items in particular. Of his own belongings, he regrets not putting his high school diploma in the nicer case he recently bought.

In terms of a family possession, he wishes the stand-up piano on the first floor that he, his mother and brother play is intact.

Still, those are material items. Just seeing his mother in person should eliminate part of that surreal quality. After his parents get Jason settled into his new high school, his mother will visit him at SU sometime in the next few weeks. She plans to raid Kevin’s closet of clothes for everyone else.

At the same time, Kevin isn’t going to sit around waiting for her to show up.

‘I want to see them pretty bad,’ Kevin said of his family. ‘But I’ve got to be here, got to run fast, do well in school. I’d say I’m handling it pretty well considering the circumstances.’

That’s because he subscribes to the theory he isn’t the only one in the family with a home right now. But that’s not because he considers Essex, Conn., his family’s new home. After all, his parents don’t have jobs, his brother doesn’t have friends and his dog doesn’t have his toys.

For Kevin, none of those details matter anymore.

”Home’ used to mean my house and New Orleans. But now, it’s just wherever my family is.’

Ethan Ramsey is an Asst. Sports Editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns usually appear every Tuesday, but Labor Day pushed it back this week. E-mail him at egramsey@gmail.com

Published on September 6, 2005 at 12:00 pm