For millions of television news viewers, the human face of suffering in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath was a distraught black man named Hardy Jackson, caught on camera as he wandered in the debris-littered streets of Biloxi, Miss.

"I'm lost, I'm lost," he wailed as he clutched a child in his arms and the woman interviewing him wiped tears from her own eyes. "I don't know where I'm going."

From the living room of his sister's home near Palmetto, Ga., Monday, Hardy Jackson recalled with emotion and with resolve the event that snatched his wife from his arms in the fury of the storm, the event that took her life, the event that gave him a new way to live.

Hardy said that in past hurricanes a government representative would come to his and other homes in Biloxi, Miss., to determine if people were going to leave or ride out the storm. The storms had hit many times before.

This time, said 53-year-old Hardy, no one came. Hardy and and his wife, Tonette, decided they could ride out the storm as they had done with others.

Their children, ages 12, 15, 26 and 28, all decided to move to different locations around Biloxi as Katrina approached, further away from their home that sat no more than a city block from the churning waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

One of their daughters, 26-year-old Mary, had already called in those early morning hours, trying to convince them to leave. But Hardy and Tonie, the name he called 45-year-old Tonette, persisted in their intent in staying in their home, believing they could ride out Katrina.

"We were inside, sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee like it was a regular morning. I was walking and pacing up and down the floor, scared," Jackson said, knowing that Katrina was closing in. "I had my hammer stuck down in my pants. Tonie said, 'Get that hammer out of your pants, you're not going to need that.' But I told her I was going to keep it because it might come in handy."

The phone rang and again it was Mary, telling them to leave, knowing that her father could not swim. But Tonie would not hear of it, telling Mary instead not to worry her father.

"Tonie told Mary that if anything happened she would save me," Hardy chuckled. "We were going to stay right where we were in our neighborhood. Some other people stayed, too."

Mary called again, from her brother's house located on higher ground. She told her parents to look out the window. Hardy went to the window and peered through the cracks of the boards he had fixed to the windows earlier.

"It hadn't really broke daylight, I couldn't see really good yet. I peeked again and thought, No, no, there's supposed to be a house next door.

"Then we heard something up under the house, like a rumbling noise and I knew it didn't sound good. Then the carpet started getting wet. Then I went