Raynell

You have to steal glances at Raynell's large, luminous, brown eyes. He won't look at you, preferring to fix his gaze on something in the yonder, and his brow is so furrowed you have to wonder what in the world has a four-year-old boy so worried.

"I love J.B.," he abruptly announces. The last time Raynell had seen J.B. Jones, his maternal grandfather, was in September in the New Orleans Superdome where both had sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina and the torrential flooding that ensued.

With his mother and older brother and sister, Raynell spent several harrowing days and nights in the Superdome, saved from Katrina only to face hunger, heat, poor sanitation, darkness and danger inside the facility.

"They turned the lights off and it was dark," recalls Emyne, Raynell's 9-year-old sister. "They were shooting people. It was scary in there."

Meanwhile, J.B. was being cared for by his ex-wife in a special section of the Superdome reserved for the disabled. Eventually, he was transferred to Tulane University Hospital while Raynell and his family were bused to a shelter in Dallas and later to Houston. The family lost track of J.B.

Months of desperate searches on the Internet, by telephone and by word of mouth, finally paid off in early February when, at last, the family learned that J.B. had settled in a Louisiana rehabilitation center an hour away. Raynell rejoiced at the good news. But on the same day the boy learned his grandfather's whereabouts, J.B., only 51, died.

From CDF's 2006 report, Katrina's Children: A Call to Conscience and Action. Read more stories of Katrina's children.