Imagine having to leave your friends and most of your family to go somewhere else. Imagine looking at the house you grew up in for the very last time. Senior Maurice Wharton remembers the day when that happened to him, and he vowed to never forget..

            Wharton grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and lived there most of his childhood. He never thought he’d have to leave his city until the day hurricane Katrina struck his house.

            “We were warned a few days ahead of time about the hurricane, and we knew we had to leave,” Wharton said. “I wasn’t too scared, but I really didn’t want to leave my home.”

            Most people would have been having a nightmare in this situation, but Wharton was actually getting a kick out all of it in a somewhat positive way.

            “My mom told me we were moving to Texas, but at that time I’d never been anywhere else,” Wharton said. “But I got to stay in a very nice hotel, and I got to sight see a little bit even though I was still a little sad about leaving New Orleans.”

            Like most people, Wharton was uncertain of what was next in his life. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t look in the past, and he had to move forward.

            “I didn’t want to make new friends,” Wharton said. “I wanted my old friends back, but I had to tell myself that I’d probably never see them again. I was able to meet a lot of nice and cool people though.”

            When everybody around the country looks at New Orleans as a underwater destroyed city, Wharton sees it as the place he grew up in.

            “New Orleans will always be my home,” Wharton said. “Every time I go back, I look at it as the greatest city in the world. It’s the town that made me the person I am today.