On opposite sides of the great swath cut by Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Charles &uot;Chuck&uot; Noland and his wife, Gayle Noland, tell equally compelling stories.

Chuck in New Orleans, hunkered down in the 1752 Ursuline Convent with its precious documents and artifacts dating to 1718, saw his beloved city in shambles from the storm and ensuing levee break.

Gayle, at the couple’s recently purchased retirement home in Long Beach, watched family papers and photographs float through the front door that raging winds had slammed flat.

For days, the husband and wife did not know of the other’s fate. He remained at the convent, where he works with historic records and materials as archivist of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Two priests and two parishioners also remained at the convent, the oldest building in the entire Mississippi River Valley.

Gayle, a special education teacher and head of faculty and staff development at Delgado College in New Orleans, was rescued from the flooded, roofless house and taken to a shelter in a Long Beach school.

&uot;I walked into the shelter and thought I’d walked through the gates of hell,&uot; she said, sitting in the parlor at the St. Mary Basilica rectory, where she and her husband are guests of the Rev. David O’Connor, St. Mary pastor.

Most of those in the shelter had been there since before the storm hit the coast on that Monday morning. She arrived Monday night.

&uot;All the windows were in the classrooms, which were locked. The hallway was dark. People were sitting on the floor &045; old people, sick people &045; on both sides of the hall. There was no air. The toilets were overflowing. There was no water and no food. The smell was overpowering.&uot;

She found her way to the end of a hall, seeking only the hint of fresh air coming from underneath a door. She curled up on the floor to sleep and then began laughing quietly.

&uot;I realized that I had all I needed,&uot; she said. Before leaving home to board the bus for the shelter, she grabbed a few things. &uot;I kind of blindly took a pair of jeans, a fleece jacket, a fleece lap blanket and then I went to look for my purse.&uot;

She found the refrigerator had floated away; so had the dining room table. &uot;My purse was sitting next to our wedding picture. I took that and my tooth brush.&uot;

So now she had her extra pair of jeans to place on the floor for a bed, the fleece jacket for a pillow and the small blanket for cover. The floor was damp. She lay still and thanked God that at least she knew her two daughters were safe. They had left the New Orleans area to be with relatives farther north. &uot;And at that point I thought Chuck was safe because I knew he was at the convent.&uot;

One daughter later told Gayle that she had prayed for an angel to rescue her mother. More than one angel figures in Gayle’s survival story. After the fireman who put her on the bus, there was the shelter resident who left to go to work and gave Gayle her bottle of Gatorade and bag of Goldfish crackers.

&uot;I learned you can take a shower in a rainstorm, survive two days on Gatorade and Goldfish and you can sleep outside on the ground and survive.&uot;

On Tuesday night, she became ill. A headache, probably caused by the stale air in the shelter, sent her looking for a way outside. It was dark, and people were stretched across the hallways, making it difficult for her to navigate. Another angel appeared, a stranger who saw her plight and helped her to get outside. &uot;We sat and talked until sunrise,&uot; Gayle said.

Two days later, that man’s brother came with an international cellular phone. She was able to contact her son in San Diego, Calif. &uot;I learned that Chuck was fine, and I knew then that he would come.&uot;

By then, however, she had been put in charge of the shelter. &uot;By Thursday, I was completely in charge,&uot; she said. She became familiar with many of the 300 shelter residents, gave comfort to one man who had cut off three fingers while getting out of his house and another who had gouged out his eye on a pipe during evacuation.

&uot;There was blood everywhere in the shelter. Children were walking around barefoot.&uot; A doctor began making regular rounds at the shelter.

All the while, Gayle remembered on the morning of the hurricane the funny sense that she should put on her daughter’s old running shoes, which had become comfortable work shoes for her. &uot;Something said to me to put on my shoes. I knew I wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but it turned out to be a very smart thing to do.&uot;

She had made the trip to Long Beach, a regular weekend trek since the purchase of the house, to take another carload of personal family items to the new residence. They were selling the house in Metairie and planned to move permanently to the retirement house, a two-story house situated on two lots and beautifully landscaped by a former owner.

On that Monday morning, she watched the water rise. She heard the wind rip the roof off the house. She watched neighbors’ roofs blow away. She prayed. She wrote Psalm 91 from memory. &uot;I kept saying, ‘Lord, if you brought me here to kill me, I’d just as soon die of a heart attack than in this water.’&uot;

She sat on the stairs and watched the front door fall. A large book was caught in the doorway, and the wind eerily turned a page every now and then. The dozens of trees in the yard, perhaps as many as 80, began to topple from the roots. It was after dark before she left the devastation of what was meant to be their dream house.

For Gayle, memories continue to surface &045; particularly of the goodness of the people in the shelter, the lack of complaining under direst of circumstances, the willingness of every able-bodied person to do whatever he could to help. She experienced again and again the power of the loaves-and-fishes lesson from the Bible.

The experience has changed her forever, Gayle said. &uot;I’m not sure how, but I know I’ve learned a lot about myself and about human nature.&uot;

She recalled waking early one morning when she was sleeping outside. &uot;The stars were exquisite before dawn. The sunrise was unbelievable, with clouds over the shelter looking exactly like Michelangelo’s God at Creation. I knew I had been to the gates of hell and back, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The goodness of the people was amazing, and people were really suffering.&uot;

Now, in the middle of the night, she lies awake with some fears of the unknown future. But during the day, her confidence returns that she and Chuck will take what was dealt them one day at a time. &uot;I can’t control it. I think God has been with me, from the time I decided to put on my shoes. Everything I needed has been provided.&uot;