Richard Formato

Richard Formato is an avid catch-and-release fly-fisherman from Wytheville, Va. When not on the water, he operates a small business there. Formato loves to fly-fish in his native Southwest Virginia because of the great water and wonderful people. He also loves to fish the flats and shallows of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic whenever work and weather permit. He is on the Department of Conservation and Recreation's board of directors and is a trustee of the Shenandoah National Forest and Skyline Drive.

Recent columns

• What about Bob?
• Notes from the Charlotte Fly Show
• A chance meeting
• A wish for Jack

• Column archive
• Talk fly-fishing

The last thing on my mind is fly-fishing.

I am in Florida hoping to chase some snook, but instead I am scrounging up supplies to send to New Orleans.

Een here, there are gas lines for regular at $3.60 a gallon -- if you can get it.

In regards to Hurricane Katrina, our government has let America down.

It has not come to the rescue.

We can rescue Iraqi’s, tsunami victims, Africans, Kurds, but not ourselves.

There are residents in New Orleans living in darkness, living in fear, and living in death without assistance in kind from our federal government, the richest government in the world.

The most powerful metaphor was President Bush on vacation from the Iraq war and American reality of Katrina when three days after the storm, he decided to survey the devastation from Air Force One.

The best he could do was to look out a window riding a jumbo jet over the flooded swamp land of New Orleans.

On September 11th, Bush was in the rubble, rolling up his sleeves in the world’s fallen financial center at ground zero.

It was a strong image, and made us feel better, because it gave a sense of control in a time of fear and sadness.

I have to believe there is some other reason why he has not walked the soggy soil of one America’s most storied and unusual cities.

I have to believe it is because the remaining flooded residents in New Orleans are mostly poor and mostly black.

Too poor and too naïve to think that a Class IV hurricane could kill them.

I moved to Roanoke from New Orleans in 1983, so I know of what I speak.

Being from a boy from the western North Carolnia mountains, my time in Louisiana was combat duty as I started my career as a businessman.

I traveled that country alone in a company car, calling on customers, zig-zagging the Mississippi River on $1 a hop, flat-bottomed ferries that were docked on shell-bottomed roads.

This was a foreign world of unbelievable roadside meals, sweltering hot days, helicopter sized dragonflies, and fishing the roadside canals with a 10-foot cane pole and bobber.

The water was shallow and black, but the redfish were everywhere. Lake Ponchetrain has an average depth of 15 feet even though it is 20 miles wide.

With most of the land below sea level, I still can’t process how such a big body of water could be so shallow.

I remember one lake in Baton Rouge that had a lawn chair sitting in the muck smack dab in the middle.

But even back then, Louisiana was to me a forgotten land.

You had muddy dirt roads, un-air-conditioned shotgun style houses beside huge petrochemical refineries, lit up like space colonies at night.

I will never forget the sign for the leper colony in Angola, La., the burnt-out skeletons of Civil War mansions destroyed by the Union army, and the friendly people who always asked me, “Where you from again?”

It is hard for me to accept that America now has its own refugees -- thousands homeless because of a storm in a country that has let them fend for themselves.

This is not the same American response as September 11th.

The help being pledged is not enough to meet the apocalyptic aftermath of a 25-foot storm surge, and a mocking lake that is still cascading water into the basement of one America’s largest homes.

Where are the donations from rap stars that spend millions on diamond encrusted watches?

Where is Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Tom Cruise?

Tom Cruise gets $20,000,000 dollars a picture for “playing” heroes, certainly not being one.

One movie equals 2 million people who could get fed on the Gulf Coast for a day.

Right now, we have Americans that have to steal to eat. I would do the same exact thing.

We live in a country that is stretched so thin spending $20 million a day fighting Iraq that we don’t have the human resources to send in battalions of soldiers to take total command of the situation in New Orleans.

There are some that will say, New Orleans is full of sin, and the residents who were affected even had it coming because they didn’t leave.

I say, what difference does it make?

The facts are: people need aid. They need food, clothing, medicine and toys.

My family is doing all we can, sending money, clothes and supplies.

We are redeploying our workers to these areas to help the residents rebuild their lives.

It will be hard to hold a fly rod this week, knowing the cost of my rod could provide food and clothing for a Louisianan family. We will open our home to anyone we can who needs a place to stay.

Despite their crazy accents, hotter than fire food, and penchant for walking the streets in summertime sunshine with umbrella’s, they are still Americans … and they are being orphaned once again.

Please do your part. Call the Red Cross or Salvation Army and chip in.

Anything will be appreciated.

Anything is better than nothing.

We will fish later.