Since Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in August of 2005, nothing has come easy
for those living in the Big Easy. Many New Orleans-based businesses have been
forced to make drastic changes. Such is the case of Liberto Cleaners, owned and
operated by John and Mary Pat Walter.
The company has been in Mary Pat’s family for three generations, founded shortly after the Great Depression in
1932. Now, in its 75th year, the aftermath of Katrina has downshifted the
region into a new depression, and Liberto has had to incorporate creative
solutions just to keep its doors open.
“We had over $300,000
worth of damage. We lost about 120 square feet of roof,” John recalled. “In our plant, we had floodwater that was only ankle deep, which wasn’t bad. Six blocks away from us it was chest deep.”
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The storm had ripped off the big ventilator fans (along with the sections of the
roof to which they were attached), and a lot of the cleaning equipment was
drenched with brackish waters. Even clean clothes suffered damage.
“When we evacuated, we left nine baskets of shirts (about 1,000 altogether) on
the floor, washed and ready to be pressed,
” he said. “Then, we were gone and without power for a month, so naturally, they got all
mildewed.
”
Not only was the local power shut down for weeks after Katrina, but the entire
city of New Orleans was, as well. In fact, John didn
’t see an insurance adjuster until about two months following the devastation.
“It’s a shame, and it happened to everyone in the New Orleans area,” John noted. “By the time my claims adjuster got to me, I want to say I had about $10,000 to
$12,000 in receipts. My building was secured and the roof fixed. I paid for a
lot of cleanup out of my own pocket. I was ready to reopen.
”
By October of 2005, John had a working boiler, as well as a couple of hothead
presses and a washer. Finding customers wasn
’t a problem, since a lot of clothes needed to be restored. In order to do that,
John set up an ozone machine and hung clothing on racks inside his route vans.
After all, they couldn
’t be used for deliveries.
Despite his inventive efforts, Liberto still had a major problem: the company
had no employees left.
Once in a while, solutions arrive out of the blue. One day when John and Mary
Pat were cleaning up the plant, the National Guard paid them a visit.
“The National Guard had set up a base at a school about six blocks away from our
store,
” John recalled. “Whoever was running things — I believe it was a captain — wanted to know if I could clean uniforms for them. I said, ‘I’d be glad to, but there is only one of me to do everything.’ He said, ‘It just so happens that there’s somebody who aggravates me every day in my platoon. I’ll send you whoever pisses me off for the day’.”
For roughly a month after that, Liberto got free help from National Guard
members who happened to be in the doghouse each day. Meanwhile, the three
Walter children brought their friends from college back with them on the
weekends to chip in around the plant. The community bond in the region was
unbreakable.
“Our customers are the best in the world,” John emphasized. “When we reopened, they would walk in with $500 cash and say, ‘Can you put this on my account? I’ll be bringing you clothes, but I know you need money right now to get going.’ We had people wanting to put money in their account to help us restart. It was
great.
”
Liberto also received a “care package” from one of their suppliers.
“Sanitone went through and looked at everything we ordered and had two pallets of
supplies show up,
” he said. “They never once wanted money for it. I believe at the time of the hurricane, we
had a bill of about $1,800, but they said don
’t worry about it.”
Even with help coming from all sides, keeping Liberto’s doors open became increasingly difficult as operating costs skyrocketed.
“The lower income people of the New Orleans area who worked in the drycleaning
industry and the hospitality industry have been forced out of the city,
” John said. “Our employee base has less to draw from. My payroll has gone from about $8,000 a
week to $14,000 to $15,000 a week now. Since we don
’t have experienced help — because you have to teach quality before you can teach speed — production is down. I used to need 32 to 33 employees; I now need 36 to 38.”
Labor isn’t the only cost that has increased; Liberto’s utilities have steeply risen, as well.
“Our utility bills have gone berserk,” he noted. “Before the hurricane, my natural gas, electric and water combined ran between
$2,000 and $2,400 a month. Last month, my gas and electric bill was $5,300 and
my water bill was $1,700.
”
As bad as his situation sounds, John knows many people have it worse, including
his own employees.
“Some of them are still sleeping on concrete floors in their houses on
mattresses,
” he said.
Most are waiting for more insurance money, and the little they have received isn’t sufficient to pay for the rising construction costs. In many cases, insurance
money allotted for furniture and appliances is being used to finish rebuilding
homes instead.
When times are so bleak, it’s almost impossible to motivate employees.
“You have to be a cheerleader and do anything you can,” he said. “If you own a store, you have to laugh and you have to get your employees’ minds off of what is going on. If you’re not having a fish fry on a Friday afternoon for your employees, you’re doing a crawfish boil after the production is finished when you have to work
a Saturday.
”
After trying to keep his employees sane, John has to find a way to unwind
himself. For that, he shifts gears and races a GT-1 Corvette for the Sports
Club of America.
His love for speed began when he was eight years old, first racing go-karts,
then motorcycles. During high school, however, he crashed badly during a
Motocross race.
“Basically, I had fallen during the first turn and I was run over by about four
or five bikes,
” he recalled. “It ended up being a pile of motorcycles on top of me and I was burnt really
badly. I didn
’t have any broken bones, but I had a number of burns, of which gangrene set in.
So, for six months, every day after high school, I would have to go to the
local clinic and they would pour Sulfa in my burns and take a green
Scotch-Brite pad to scrub them out and keep them clean.
”
He eventually healed, but his desire to race machines never went away. Now, he
races about a dozen times a year at speeds as high as 180 m.p.h.
“My car looks like your average street car, but it’s about a thousand pounds lighter. The engine produces about 650 HP,” he noted. “When you’re running bumper to bumper or door handle to door handle with somebody, you
really are on your toes about what is going on around you. To me, that
’s relaxation.”
Even after he took a year off following Katrina, John has still won four
championships in the past three years.
“The money we win would never pay for anything,” he laughed. “I’m basically sponsored by my Visa card.”
He receives some help from Mike Poupart Motorworks in maintaining his car, but
John prefers to do most of the work himself.
He must be doing a fine job both under the hood and behind the wheel since he
hasn
’t had any major crashes. There was one time in Talladega, AL, however, when his
car careened off the track and into the woods.
“It wasn’t a bad deal,” he said. “There’s so much safety built into the car that you don’t have to worry. If you start worrying about things like that, you’ll start making mental mistakes.”
John has always been mechanically-inclined. He worked as an electrical inspector
on naval ships for six years before cutbacks lead him to join his wife
’s family business. Originally, he had to justify his own position, so he drove a
delivery route and brought in new customers.
Now, 23 years later, he is back in the driver’s seat picking up and delivering clothes again — doing whatever he can to keep the Liberto legacy alive.
“The plant is completely operational again,” John said. “Our profit margin is down, but that’s just because of the situation in the area with the labor rates, supplies and
everything going up. But, as an owner of a cleaners, you have to sympathize
with your customer base who are dealing with contractors and are really going
through a rough time.
”
Many families are separated as husbands work on rebuilding homes in the area and
wives take their children to school out of state.
“Children in middle school in some counties in Texas receive free laptops,
whereas in the New Orleans area, the public schools are so bad that the
children have to share textbooks, or only have a classroom copy,
” he said.
John can’t fault his own employees who believed their lives would be better off
elsewhere, but he wants people to know that the city he has lived in for 45
years is getting stronger each day.
“All you hear nationwide is the bad press of New Orleans. They’re talking about the crime and the murder rate of the city, but what people don’t realize is a lot of this element is following the construction people into the
city and that
’s scaring away our tourist industry.”
New Orleans may still have a way to go until it’s restored to its former glory, but the locals refuse to give up.
“Sure, the store owners are suffering, and we’re working harder than we ever have,” he said, “but the city is turning around.”
