Five Years Ago

This time five years ago, Clark and I were glued to the television like everyone else. And like everyone else, we wanted to do something to help Katrina victims. We didn't hesitate to volunteer to go down to the Gulf Coast to help clean up with Frazer UMC a week after the storm hit. Because we had both attended Ole Miss, and Clark is a native Mississippian, we wanted to do our part.

But we had no idea. The TV did not do it justice. And I still can't believe what I saw. Because New Orleans was getting the bulk of the press, there were not very many people on the Mississippi Coast helping. I know. I was there.

We were housed on the floor of Vancleave UMC's Sunday School classes with outdoor showers (brrr), and I do not remember anyone complaining. That would have just been wrong.

The first house we were assigned to belonged to an elderly couple. The husband was at his son's house and his wife was sitting all alone in a lawn chair in their front yard sifting through what was left of her china tea cups. We couldn't understand how any of them survived, because not ten feet away lay what appeared to be someone's garage roof. There was also a torn up refrigerator, an air conditioning blade, lots of insulation soaked in salt water, and hundreds of pieces of people's belongings in the form of photographs, clothes, toys--you name it-- on her lawn. And the yard next to hers and the yard next to that one, and as far as you could see.

We were one block off the beach in Pascagoula, and there was nothing but big piles of people's lives from one end of the neighborhood to the other. Donned in boots and rubber gloves, we opened drawers filled with nasty ocean water and began to try to throw out even more stuff. It was daunting. The air inside the houses was still and hot and wretched. There was no where to begin and no where to stop. You had to take breaks and step out of the house --it was that bad. I had 5 feet of water in my own house for three days when the Pearl River flooded Jackson, MS in 1979, but that was not even close to the devastation on the coast.

The next day, we were assigned to another family a little further from the beach. They had family helping them rip out sheet rock and were in better shape. We cleaned their floors and the walls with bleach. The lady there was so appreciative of our help that she insisted I take a Christmas teapot from her house that I had admired. People were so genuinely grateful for the slightest measure of help, and they wanted to do something to show it even though they had nothing to give.

We went back about 3 weeks later on a chain saw mission. This particular family lived in a wooded area with trees down everywhere. Clark and Rudy Heintzelman cut, and I carried and stacked the wood. The father of the family was ill with cancer and the mother had just had a baby. You could not let these people see you cry. So appreciative, so proud, so not deserving of what was served up to them in the way life does.

We went back one more time to help with the clean-up and when I came home, my sister and I started a website for 3 schools and collected over 7,000 AR books for them. The picture above is of St. Martin Elementary, one of the schools we collected for. Katrina was a life changing event for so many people, including me. I just wish we treated each other like that on a daily basis. And I am reminded of it every Christmas when I get out that teapot.