HER CAUSE OF DEATH WAS PAIN

"In the dawn of the morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks
and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall."

- -- Hans Christian Andersen

After last Sunday's story about the death of Olivia Roberts, dubbed "the
lost soul of Park Street" by her friend, I was asked why we gave the story
so much attention.

More specifically, I was asked why we published an obituary story on the
passing of a well-known physician inside the paper, when the next day we
published a lengthy, three-part package on page one about a drug-addicted
prostitute who died under a bridge.

That's a good question. Here's my best answer.

First, a little explanation about how The Courier handles death notices.

Most people who die are memorialized in a short obituary. The information
we report comes to us on a form that a funeral home fills out with the
assistance of family members.

For the death of a prominent community member, the doctor for instance, we
sometimes go further than the standard obituary. We interview people about
his life and publish a story under a reporter's byline, but they're usually
placed near the obituaries.

The story of Olivia Roberts' death was not just a story about one person.
It was a story that revealed the underbelly of our city.

Olivia, a crack addict who plied the world's oldest trade on Park Avenue,
was not a prominent member of the community.

In letters from jail, Olivia asked: "Will I ever be somebody?" She would
never be the person she wanted to be.

She was never going to attend a Chamber of Commerce banquet or be asked to
join a civic club. She died cold and alone. She died like Hans Christian
Andersen's "Little Match-Seller," who succumbed to the cold night in a city
where "Lights were shining from every window, and there was a savory smell
of roast goose."

Olivia died in such a place on such a night when the temperature dropped
down to the mid-20s. After 26 long, hard years, she just laid down in the
dirt and died.

Referred to by a friend as "one of the night zombies," Olivia gained
prominence in The Courier because her story tells the stories of others who
have left the light and turned to the dark world of drugs, prostitution and
lonely death.

If nothing else, such a story brings to life a faceless person who was once
cradled and nursed and who delighted in her own first steps, birthday
parties and TV cartoons. Somewhere along the way, people like Olivia fall
out of the warm ring that surrounds most of us with security and acceptance.

We all start out in life with a clean slate, but we're given different
opportunities and we travel different roads. People like Olivia, a child
taken from a broken family and placed in a foster home, sometimes manage to
beat the odds and do well. Those are the exceptions. People like Olivia
often end up like Olivia.

Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens wrote of such people in the
19th century to make it impossible for us to comfortably forget that they
exist.

In the late 20th century Studs Terkel interviewed a prostitute for his
well-known book "Working." It told the story of bad choices, exploitation
and the predictable undoing of a beautiful call girl who was kept in the
business with money and drugs until her looks ran out. She was walking the
streets when Terkel found her.

Women of the night walk the streets of Park Avenue in Houma. It's not a
secret, and they appear not to hide it. It's an unfortunate part of our
city, and our report on Olivia's death tells us why we should care about
such things as the illegal drug trade and prostitution. It also tells of
the need for hugging our children and demanding first-rate foster care for
children without parents to hug them.

And it reminds us that the street people are, indeed, people - people who
want to be cared about and who feel pain so deeply that they can just lay
down and die from it.