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What Was Lost: A nurse’s career at Charity Hospital [1]
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Date: 2025-07-07
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Alice Craft-Kerney had been working as a nurse at Charity Hospital for over 19 years when Hurricane Katrina hit and disrupted her career.
Craft-Kerney said she liked the feeling of being able to make a difference in her community as a caregiver. Once, a former patient approached her at a birthday party to thank her for taking care of him after a car accident.
“I could not remember, but he remembered the care that I gave him, and it sort of melted my heart,” Craft-Kerney said.
Charity Hospital, then the oldest continually operating hospital in the country, was known at the time for caring for New Orleans’ underserved populations. In the weeks following the hurricane and flooding caused by the failure of the federal levee system, Craft-Kerney was informed by letter that she would not be able to return to her position at the hospital as an assistant section manager.
She said she was confused by the sudden termination of her position because she saw younger nurses who she had trained rehired by the state.
“I had more experience and I had satisfactory evaluation, so I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t come back,” she said.
Charity Hospital was permanently shut down by the state in September 2005, just weeks after the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. It was later replaced by University Medical Center New Orleans.
Craft-Kerney was one of thousands of Charity employees who were furloughed following the hurricane, and her job was eventually eliminated when the hospital closed.
“I felt like I could start my career there and end my career there,” Craft-Kerney said. “And I lost that sense of stability after Katrina.”
Although she knew she could find work elsewhere, Craft-Kerney said she felt her career was taken from her because the state didn’t reopen Charity Hospital.
“I could become a nurse anywhere, but my heart and my soul was always in New Orleans,” she said.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, Craft-Kerney helped found and served as executive director of the Lower 9th Ward Health Clinic, a community health initiative to help serve New Orleanians who had lost access or had limited access to healthcare.
Craft-Kerney ran the clinic from 2007 to when it closed in 2011 due to funding issues.
Charity Hospital was closed shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Credit: Illustration by Bethany Atkinson/Deep South Today
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[1] Url:
https://veritenews.org/2025/07/07/what-was-lost-alice-craft-kerney-charity/
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