receiving trailers a year later

We've been doing a ton of tree removal jobs lately. We have a great system going - someone to tie the rope, pullers, chainsawers, and even a set-up in which we use the dump truck to pull the big trees (those that Jen, Marianne and I may not be quite strong enough versus the wind). As Ron told us when he watched us take down a couple of trees, "you're a well-oiled machine." So, while tree jobs have become the norm, I'm still surprised at the need.

We are the only organization along the Gulf Coast removing dead trees even though everyone sees the problem - from the local news to the forestry department. Aside from the shock I still have that we're the only group helping out in this way, I am also shocked as to why certain trees need to be removed. Most dead trees we remove so they won't fall on a trailer or house under construction. But in some cases, families still haven't even received their FEMA trailer. So we show up to an empty lot and I think to myself "Why are we taking these trees down?" And then I learn that it is so that the property can be safe to receive the trailer or start rebuilding.

This past week we worked on two lots so that their owners could receive their FEMA trailers. One lot needed trees cleared. We were able to remove the dead pines arounds the property to secure the area where the trailer would be put. The second lot needed major weeding to make an area suitable to place a trailer. The owner of this lot had to relocate to northern Louisiana a few months ago in order to work and had to leave her lot unattended.

Nearing a year later, people are still only now receiving their FEMA trailers. While some people are moving back into their homes and businesses are slowly but surely are reopening, there are still just as many people in the very first stages of rebuilding. It's a year later and many are just receiving the financial and government help they deserve. And still many others are still waiting.

Southern hospitality

On my plane ride to move to Mississippi in June, I sat next to a native southerner. He told me of the one time he was in Boston for a conference, the great food, the beautiful Common. The one part he said he didn’t like was the rude drivers. “They cut you off, flip you off……no one would ever do that in the South,” he told me. “‘Cause everyone’s armed and dangerous, never know when someone’ll pull out a gun.” “Well, there’s one way to look at southern hospitality,” I replied.

Although I did enjoy the man’s interesting point, I have found an impressive amount of truly heartfelt southern hospitality. My first job when I got down here was building office space at Hope Haven. The founder of Hope Haven and his wife invited us all to their home for lunch and a little pool party one weekend. Just last weekend, Karen, who works at Hope Haven, had us over to her house for dinner. Evelina, the woman who runs the local newspaper, took us out to dinner the other night and keeps us up-to-date on town events.

Then there are Ron and Rosie who live down the street from us. We happened to meet Ron by chance a few weeks ago and since then they have taken us in. A couple Tuesdays ago they invited us to their home for a home-cooked fried shrimp dinner – I’d never tried shrimp and to my surprise I actually like it! The next week, though only Jen and I were around, they took us out to dinner and showed us their new house which is close to being finished. When Ron found out Jen likes to play golf, he even offered to try to find her a sponsor so she could play on his team in an upcoming golf tournament which benefits the Fire Department and offered to share his clubs.

While the free food is much appreciated amid Salvation Army frozen dinners and Katrina Kitchen meals, the hospitality and connection to where we’re living is what I really love. Getting to know these people, knowing we’re welcomed into the community and really starting to feel a part of it, instead of just people who are just staying there, is awesome. I can’t thank them enough for all they’ve done for us!

While we were painting the pharmacy the other day, a woman pulled her car over from the busy street and asked us if she could buy us cokes or anything as a thank you for our work. She didn’t work at the pharmacy; she may not even use this pharmacy. But the overflow of hospitality is inspiring. There’s a lot of negative stuff that has and maybe still is going on down here – people not receiving the help they need. But seeing how positive and genuinely warm-hearted so many people are is just incredible.

Terry, Ann, Karen and Rosie aren’t actually from the South. So either southern hospitality has rubbed off on them, or people are just nice wherever you are. But one way or another, whatever people’s motivations, I’m pretty sure none of it is out of fear as the man on the plane had joked.

Carmen

The other day I met a woman named Carmen and her husband, Clarence, who is in a wheel-chair. The home they lived in pre-Katrina still lies mostly untouched since the storm. They now stay with their two daughters in a home they built for one of them. The FEMA trailer the couple received sits in the daughter’s yard; since her house isn’t big enough for them all, Carmen’s daughter stays in her parents’ trailer, giving them her bedroom and bath.

Although Carmen is appreciative of her daughter’s generosity and their good-fortune in having a family member’s home to live in, she feels cramped and yearns to be back in her own home. Clarence’s wheel-chair has scraped marks along the hallway walls of the house and nicked the doorframes of the bedroom and bathroom. But the couple’s own home is far from being livable, even though it’s nearly been a year since the storm hit.

Mold still needs to be removed from Carmen’s home – the first step in rebuilding. Carmen told me what she’d received from FEMA, that hey had no insurance and what little progress they have made. Numerous contractors and volunteer groups never returned her calls or told her they couldn’t help because of the scale of the job.

I met Carmen when I went to talk to her about applying for grants for building materials. She was so enthusiastic and appreciative that I was even there talking with her about rebuilding and helping her put things in motion. A physically tiny woman – no taller than 5’ at most – her joy filled the room.

Odd jobs

As usual we have many different projects and jobs going on at the same time:

Tollman Rd. Cemetery
A few weeks ago we started working on a cemetery in Pass Christian, where we're located. The cemetery seems to have been neglected since Katrina - trees were down, some on top of headstones, and the entire cemetery had been overtaken with weeds. One of the fallen trees - a massive oak - had been trimmed down by another organization but whoever started the job was unable to completely remove the tree. We've been working as much as possible removing the fallen trees, replacing pushed over tombstones and weeding the terribly overgrown cemetery. We had a group of volunteers work extremely hard with us for a day and they made a huge dent in the job, but this is a big cemetery and weeding takes a lot more time than I would have ever imagined. We definitely need more volunteer groups (which we are seeking) to complete this project but will not leave the project undone or allow for the cemetery to once again become neglected.

Frank
Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. have been helping a man named Frank since they were down here in the winter with Hands-On USA. Frank and his wife are wonderful people who need an incredible amount of help rebuilding. His wife, Georgia, always says "Oh, he'll find something for you to do." From odd jobs like weedwacking to major rebuilding jobs like building stairs up to the attic we do whatever we can for the couple. Recently Marianne, Jen and I dug a trench down the side of the house which was sprayed to fight off termites. Bill Jr. wired cable to the many rooms of the house. Later that week Jen, Marianne and I returned with Bontay (a high schooler who's been volunteering with us), to put the ceiling up on Frank's carport. The consistency of the relationship we've formed is incredible as we get to see the continued progress and Frank and Georgia know they can rely on a group of people, in a situation where many families still feel very much forgotten or neglected.

St. Vincent dePaul Pharmacy
Another continuing project is the Saint Vincent dePaul's Pharmacy. The free pharmacy has been a partner with Persevere since our start. Bill Sr. remodeled the inside of the trailer over the winter (the pharmacy is temporarily being run out of trailer) to get them up and running again. We've conitinued to do whatever needed, including painting the exterior of the trailer recently. Last week we had 5 recent BC grads volunteering with us. One was here for a week before she starts at NYU Medical School. The 4 others made Persevere a stop on their cross-country road trip to California where they will begin Jesuit Volunteer Corps placements. In one day the group was able to seal the windows and paint the pharmacy from the drab and dingy yellow to a more warm, vibrant baby blue.

Katrina-filled garage
This week Jen and I cleaned out a garage which hadn’t been touched since Katrina. The garage, sitting behind the house of an elderly woman, is going to be used as a secure place to hold building materials for her home. We were told the job would take at least a couple of days with a decent-sized crew and to watch out for black widows, snakes – generally, to beware of anything and everything that could be in there. So, instead of a sizeable crew, Jen and I found ourselves driving up to the garage alone, unable to find spare hands to help out. When we first got there the garage door was off but leaning mostly over its opening and there was stuff that had been tossed around by Katrina filling the garage – you could barely even step inside. With a well-devised plan to keep Jen only in “secured” areas (due to an aversion to snakes) we cleared the whole thing out in a day. Finding that garage’s floor was one of the most surprising things I’ve encountered in my time in Mississippi, no joke. And that’s including the oven, 1940s coffee vending machine and piano we found in that garage alone! …Luckily, neither black widows, nor snakes were among the odd finds.

Jerry's Mowers

Today was my 3rd trip to Jerry's Mowers - a small, local, hidden store which sells and services lawn mowers, saws, etc. It's a great place. It's run by an elderly woman who is now my hero. She knows absolutely everything about tools. Very personal service, you can tell everyone who goes there (aside from us) has been going there for years. So today, as I pulled up in the big red dumper, the high school kid who has always helped me says "Uh, oh, what's the problem?" Every time I'm there one of the men working at Jerry's comments: "That saw is as big as you are," "You actually use that?" or just give a generally surprised look that I'm there with whatever tool I have and just pulled up in a big truck. (Granted, the pole saw is at least a couple feet taller than me, and no I do not use it.) It's a funny thing down here: everyone has a pick-up, so women drive them often. But, at the same time, there are some very distinct gender roles and blatant surprise when a woman does "a man's job." Everyone at Jerry's is incredibly nice and helpful, and I find the surprise is quite amusing...especially now that I think they're beginning to realize I do know what I'm talking about, even if I do wear a skirt.
My goal for the year: to become friends with the people at Jerry's so I can get one of their awesome t-shirts with a huge picture of a guy on a mower across the front.

water damage

Thursday I met Dong and his family. He and his wife bought their house 2 months before the storm hit. Their entire one-story house was flooded. Although they received very little help from FEMA and had no insurance they have been able to rebuild entirely due to support from volunteer groups and donations. Dong is now single-handedly building an addition to his house for extended family members who need a place to live. Dong has no construction experience, but that doesn't deter him - he is doing what he can with the materials he has.
Dong is a Vietnamese man who does not speak much English. His 3rd grade daughter Kathy has learned English at school and translates for her father. While his wife works he takes care of their two children, Kathy and Kevin and builds as much as possible. Thursday Bill and I helped Dong put up three walls of the addition. The job took more time than it normally would due to the language barrier - lost translations, gestures and pictures. It was amazing, however, to be able to work with such a generous, hard-working man who is so determined to do what he is able for his family. Dong made us egg-rolls for lunch and while I played cards with Kathy and Kevin he told us (through translation) about his struggles in the past year as well as all that has been accomplished.

I also recently met Ron, a retired man who has been taking photographs of Katrina's damage and the area's recovery since 2 days after the storm. He and his wife's home, in the first block from the ocean, was washed away by Katrina. Ron grew up two lots away from Persevere Headquarters, in a home nearly 3 blocks away from the water, which was also washed away by the storm. He and his wife are rebuilding a further inland according to the strict new building codes in the same area where they used to live. While they build they are staying with an elderly friend in his home. With all the work in dealing with the loss of their home and rebuilding anew, Ron and his wife are doing everything they can for the man with whom they are staying including asking Persevere to do a tree job on the man's property. The trees had been officially identified as a threat but since they were not falling or leaning, Ron had been told that they were not priority. Saturday we went over to the man's house where we took down the two rotted trees.

It was very hard for me to comprehend the damage water can do. It still is hard to imagine how so much water can travel so far inland and move so fast. Storm surge facts: the storm surge was 27' high (some people guess as high as 40' in some areas) and went as far as 6 mi. inland along the Gulf Coast and up to 12 mi. in areas along rivers and bays. "More than half of the 13 casinos in the state, which were floated on barges to comply with Mississippi land-based gambling laws, were washed hundreds of yards inland by waves" (CBS News article below).

CBS News: "Mississippi Coast Areas Wiped Out" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/01/katrina/main810916.shtml
Video from Beau Rivage along the water - keep in mind that the opening in the Beau Rivage sign you see is about one story high
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5954521938928173924&q=Hurricane+KAtrina
Mississippi Public Broadcasting video (here you see the barges on land and great birds-eye view shots)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8004256799851293431&q=Katrina+mississippi

Everett & Elaine

Our only neighbors on the street, Everett and Elaine, moved back into their home last week. We brought them home-baked "welcome back to the neighborhood" cookies the other night. The elderly couple was so thrilled to be back in their new home and be able to share that experience with us. Within less than a minute of being inside their home Elaine was showing us through every corner of the house. She showed us their new closet, telling us that all of the clothes inside were from a distribution center and how grateful she was for those free articles.

Everett, a man in his late sixties, had cleared their lot and the interior of their house by January entirely by himself. When it was finally time to rebuild his wife urged him to go to a local church to seek help from volunteers. That's where he met a man named Ken. As Everett puts it "once I told him about all the work I'd already done, he knew we were one of the families he wanted to help." Ken worked with Everett every day until the couple's recent move-in. Elaine mentioned that he installed their kitchen counter, cabinets and appliances. He helped Everett with everything from the plumbing to the molding on the walls. Without his help and the labor he donated, the couple said their house would have been finished but entirely bare - there would not have been money for furniture or anything else.

Everett is a remarkable man. Aside from all of the impressive work he accomplished on his own in preparation for rebuilding, Everett is an impressive man in terms of his reflective nature. Everett was near tears when telling us about how much it meant to him that Ken was so devoted to helping his family. Ken went to their house every day and stayed with the couple until their home was complete. Everett told us that before Katrina, he sadly doesn't know if he would have gone to another part of the country to donate his time and effort had a disaster hit elsewhere. He said he just didn't really understand a situation like that or the immense fortune it was to have volunteer help before he lived through it. Now he says that if a disaster hits somewhere else in the country he will go and serve that community as much as he is able, as so many, including Ken, did for him and Lorraine. Everett is now donating his time to another rebuilding project, working with Ken. Now that his home is completed he will work toward the heart-warming moment of moving back in for another family.

the pre-Katrina, post-Katrina divide

The other day I asked a 12-yr-old boy "What's your favorite video game?" After thinking for a minute, he responded, "Well, before Katrina or after Katrina?" "Uh, before Katrina" I decided. "Zelda" was his quick response. "And after Katrina?" I continued. "Well.....Zelda." Even twelve-year-olds are making this distinction in every aspect of their lives, down to their choice in video games.

Hope Haven is the pre-Katrina childrens' shelter we've been building office space for. Pre-Katrina Hope Haven was a shelter for abused children with twelve staff members. All twelve lost their homes. The shelter was also destroyed. Due to the loss of staff Terry, the founder, reinvented the organization according to the needs of the area and the resources available.
Post-Katrina Hope Haven functions as a foster home for up to 6 children permanently and an emergency shelter. In the case of an emergency in which children are involved, Hope Haven has the capacity to house up to twelve children temporarily. It also provides training and assistance to other foster families in the area.
With its new home and the afore-mentioned office space in an adjacent building, Hope Haven is now open and received children yesterday. The home's foster family is ecstatic to receive their 4 children.
Yesterday when we were over at Hope Haven working the foster mom, Beverly, came in in a flurry of excitement pulling out last minute things from the storage room to make the kids' welcome perfect. Two days ago the kids went over to the house for a visit yesterday afternoon. Seeing Beverly with those kids was priceless.

Karen is one of the three remaining staff members of Hope Haven. Yesterday we were able to help her move into her new home. She closed on another house less than a month ago. She and her family moved in, painted, and went to meet the neighbors who exclaimed "Oh, it's so great that the last family finally got rid of the black mold in that house so they could sell it." Karen had never been informed of any black mold (which had not been removed) and had to move out. Now, with her husband who is in the special forces recently deployed to the Middle East, she and her daughter, Sofia, have finally begun to settle into a home. As we were unloading the moving truck we came accross some of Sofia's artwork which had been on a top shelf, just avoiding the 4' of water Katrina put in their house. Karen told us that she wept like a baby when she finally entered her house after the storm because she was so grateful that this sentimental treasure had been spared.