When Richmonders Nancy Ross and Guy Fournier decided to buy a bed-and-breakfast in New Orleans a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, they knew it would be hard. They couldn't have known exactly how hard.

The hurricane at the end of August 2005, followed by rising water from broken floodgates, put 80 percent of New Orleans underwater for weeks. Even though the tourist-oriented French Quarter and the lush Garden District were unaffected by flooding, the psyche of the city was wounded.

"The first year we lived here reminded me," she said more than two years later, of "relatives who are survivors of the camps in World War II. It's the same deep emotional trauma.

"One of the things we really underestimated, besides the slow pace of recovery, was the incredible emotional toll that Katrina put on people who lived here."

This weekend, as the city begins its third Jazz and Heritage Festival since the hurricane, Ross and Fournier see the city's recovery turning a corner. The festival continues from Thursday through next Sunday with such artists as Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Buffett, Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea, and The Neville Brothers.

During the first year after the storm, Ross said, the people coming to the city were largely volunteers, Tulane parents and journalists writing about the devastation.

"Last spring, we began to see people who are coming because this is a magical place. They're coming for the food, for the music, for the architecture" - the same reasons that Ross and Fournier love the city.

Sully Mansion B&B had been for sale before the storm. Afterward, its owners decided not to return and lowered the asking price. Suddenly, the Richmond couple's dream of living in New Orleans seemed possible.

Built in 1890, the three-story, Queen Anne-style house is named after the architect who designed it with 14-foot ceilings, pocket doors, stained-glass windows and a wrap-around porch. As a bed-and-breakfast, it offers eight rooms to visitors.

Ross and Fournier went to New Orleans to talk with their Realtor about it on Nov. 5, 2005.

"People were moving back in their houses. We saw the beginnings of what life was like for people coming back," he said. Traveling into flooded areas of the city was sobering.

"It was like the newsreels I've seen of Hiroshima," she said.

"It wasn't flattened," he added, "but it was just mile after mile of abandoned urban landscape. There was nobody. No grass. No trees. No birds. No animals. Everything was brown. Everything that water touched died. Everything."

Waiting for their Realtor at a coffee shop, Fournier said, "We're sitting and thinking, 'We'll go through the motions, but it ain't going to happen,' and this woman comes along. She's obviously wealthy. She's walking over piles of debris, with all this grace and elegance. She could be anywhere, and she's here.

"We were so moved by the tenacity of the people we met."

So they bought the inn.

In Richmond, their careers had an entirely different focus. Ross had been director of Richmond's juvenile-justice department. Her husband was director of business development for Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents in New Kent County.

Each had been "seduced by New Orleans," as he put it. She fell in love with the city while a student at Vassar, when her roommate invited her to come down for Mardi Gras. Fournier, a French Canadian, had not visited until he worked with Ross to plan a conference just before the Jazz Festival.

"She persuaded me that I should come to New Orleans after the conference was over," he said. "It's such a fabulous city. The food and music and sensuality and air and light."

Before changing careers and cities, they spent four or five years researching the bed-and-breakfast business.

They had thought they would wait longer to buy in, possibly arriving just in time for her son's senior year at Tulane. Instead, Sam Wilhelm-Ross was a sophomore when they arrived.

The first year was tough - "the hardest year of our lives," she said.

"Here we are, we just invested everything we could scrape together and borrow to buy this place, and people aren't coming."

"And our house in Richmond didn't sell," he added.

Each had to get another job to make it financially. He runs a project at Catholic Charities to develop a health center for working uninsured people. She works for Tulane helping to start a center for health-equality research.

"We came here thinking we would scale down the intensity of our lives, sort of a retirement vision, not quite as hectic and time-driven as we were in Richmond," he said. "Actually, we ended up running an inn and having full-time jobs," she said.

They think of themselves primarily as innkeepers, though. She does a lot of work from home so she can be available for guests. The time that they can be innkeepers only is getting closer, she said.

"I can't imagine at this point living anywhere else," she added. "The forays that we've taken to normal land America, and the roads are smooth and there's water pressure and you want to go to a Target, and there it is, there's an ease in that . . . but it's also like eating fast food."

He looks forward to the day when a fully recovered New Orleans "will still have all the character and charm and ambiance and uniqueness that has always made it one of the most interesting places in America.

"There's no other place like it."
Contact Katherine Calos at (804) 649-6433 or kcalos@timesdispatch.com.