Downtown New Orleans looked normal Saturday morning to Paul Smith and about 60 members of the Ravens Nest fan club who were in town for Sunday?s game against the Saints.
Sitting on a bus destined for a nearby playground clean-up effort, the Ravens Nest members watched as the city streets and high-rise buildings faded away. Far more vivid images replaced them ? Hurricane Katrina-ravaged communities.
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“It?s a pretty dramatic thing,” said Smith, the president of the fan club. “It kind of got gradually worse as we kept going.”
Smith said the group saw a house with a hole through its roof. Many used those holes as a way to avoid rising water in their houses. One New Orleans man told the group that he had lived on the second floor of his residence for a whole year.
“Here we are,” Smith said. “We help out and go to the game, but when we go home up north, we?ll have these dry homes.”
When Ravens Nest members arrived at their destination, they saw a waterlogged playground in desperate need of help. A local football team was playing on a preserved space. Parents of local youth cheered their arrival.
Over the next three hours, the group joined up with a Saints fan club to help make the playground a little more useable for a community still reeling from the storm.
Ravens senior vice president of public and community relations Kevin Byrne said the team was contacted by the city of New Orleans about the project. Fan clubs of opposing teams have shown up throughout the season, helping out in similar fashion. The Ravens recommended that the Ravens Nests help.
Smith said there were many residents of Baltimore and Frederick there Saturday.
“The whole thing with the fan groups, the amazing part of that is we don?t have much connection with them,” Byrne said. “But they?re always doing good.”
When the Ravens moved to Baltimore from Cleveland in 1996, Byrne said, many members of Colts Corral renamed themselves the Ravens Roost. The community-driven group is separate from the Ravens Nest, which are groups spread throughout the East Coast and typically aid communities around the Baltimore area. The Ravens Nests collectively raise $100,000 for charity a year, Smith said, but this was one of the first road-trip efforts.
While Ravens and Saints fans were cheering for different outcomes in the Superdome Sunday, Smith said the result of Saturday?s playground work mattered more. As the Ravens Nest group parted ways with the people of New Orleans, Smith said they offered a parting gift.
“We gave them a Ravens cheer, and then we gave them a Saints cheer,” Smith said. “We got along very well.”
