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August 25 The People, Part 2Before I start I want to add a couple of disclaimers. First, although I am relaying these people's stories as I heard them I want to make it clear that they are by no means down and out. The people we spoke to had an awful thing happen to them and like everyone they have good and bad days as a result. Everyone we encountered in Mississippi and Louisiana greeted us with smiles and graciousness. They aren't sitting around crying in their soup, life goes on. But they do want, and need, to tell their stories. Second, no, I am in no way special because of our trip to help. There are hundreds of people who have given up much larger chunks of time to be there and help in the recovery. In my opinion the heroes of this story are those who went in the beginning, those who were the first to enter homes, recover bodies. The electrician my husband and a couple of the kids worked with came out of retirement in Honduras and has been there at least 10 months rewiring - all volunteer work. He is a hero.
The second night we were there they announced at supper we would have a speaker at 7:30. We figured it would last an hour at the most so planned on spending a little play-time on the beach afterwards followed by an evening worship service.
Mr. Jay was an older man, unassuming with a definite twinkle in his eye. As he began his tale we became completely enraptured. No one moved, squirmed, coughed. He is, I think, the ultimate story-teller!
Mr. Jay and his wife retired to Bay St. Louis and sunk their retirement monies into their dreams. They had a beautiful home 3 blocks from the beach, she built her dream beauty salon on one side of the house, he built a state-of-the-art recording studio on the other. Mr. Jay is one of those guys you could listen to all day. He worked for NASA for a while, was on the recovery and investigative team when Challenger went down. After he retired he started working for the NFL, he was the guy that made the final calls from the instant replays. He had a good collection of recording memorabilia - the microphone Elvis used, guitars galore. They have two grown children. A daughter living in California, a son who lived near-by. Their home withstood Hurricane Camelia in '69 - got about 2 inches of water in it, not much of a problem at all. Camelia was classified as an F5 hurricane. Katrina was only an F4. They weren't too worried. (An aside here. We watched several recordings of news reports and local people with cam-corders. All of them were really quite casual about the incoming storm. Camelia was the one thing all other storms were measured by. Her winds were blowing over 200 mph when it came ashore. Those who survived thought nothing of Katrina with winds of only 140 mph.)
As reports continued to come in Mr. Jays son decided to take his family to his wife's family home in Tennessee (or Kentucky, can't remember) just to ease her mind. Then as the winds hit shore another couple talked Mr. Jay and his wife into riding out the storm in the local church - it stood on the highest ground in the area. Mr. Jay grabbed one of his best cameras from the studio then locked it up tight, and off they went. There was a lot of noise, the steeple was pulled off the roof at one point, of course the electricity went off, but they had food and water, no worries. Then water started coming in. They put the other couples kids on tables. Water kept coming. Soon they were all floating on tables. All night they wondered what was happening outside and encouraged each other it would all be alright.
Six o'clock the next morning dawn broke. Mr. Jay stepped outside. He said it looked like the streets had been turned upside down, you could see water and sewer pipes everywhere. As his wife begged him to stay put, he took his camera and went off in search of his home. It took him a couple of hours to walk the 4 or 5 blocks. Debris and nothing else was everywhere he looked. As he would meet other people their eyes would lock, no words had to be exchanged. As he got to his street, as close as he could identify anyways, he was dismayed to find a twenty-foot pile of debris standing between him and home. He gingerly began climbing. That first peek over the top brought a wave of relief. His house was still there, the recording studio - well, the roof was gone so he knew all of the equipment would be ruined. But he still had home.
Betrayal is a terrible word. It speaks so loudly of hurt. As Mr. Jay entered the remaining walls of his recording studio - his life's dream, the thing he had sunk all of his finances into - he felt betrayed. Raped. Everything was gone, all the equipment, looted. Nothing, nothing was left in that building. Losing everything to Katrina was one thing, but this was a community completely shut off, isolated from the entire world. The people who stole his dreams were his neighbors. That thought cut through him like a sharp-edged sword.
The next few days were like being trapped in a nightmare. People wouldn't leave their yards, they were the only ones there to protect what little they had left. There was no electricity, no water, no clean clothes, nothing. As they lay out in the open at night, trying to sleep, there wasn't even any starlight. Total darkness, total silence - all the insects, small animals were gone, too. The only sounds in that horrible darkness were the cries and screams of neighbors, reliving the horrors of the day. Can you imagine?
After a few days they heard helicopters. Mr. Jay could not describe the hope and the joy our National Guard brought to them by dropping bottled water, clothing, food to them. They have a deep and profound love for our men in uniform, and rightly so.
Besides the daily trials of the recovery process, there was also the daily ritual of seeking out signals for cellular service. No one could get in, no one could get out. Families had no way of knowing who had, and who had not, survived. Mr. Jay tried many times a day, but so was everyone else. When one found a signal suddenly there were many trying to connect with the outside. It took them 9 days to get in touch with his daughter. NINE DAYS. His family had given up. The first thing he learned from his daughter was that his son - remember, he had taken his family north - was suicidal, blaming himself for abandoning his parents. He gave his daughter a message for his son that only he would understand - so he could believe they were living - and the signal died.
Mr. Jay and his wife were a successful couple. They retired in comfort. Now, they have nothing. Yet, they have everything. Their family is all safe, healthy. What they had now means very little to them. And I think that is the message of Katrina. What matters is each other.
The proud people of Bay St. Louis, Waveland, Pas Christian, Kiln, all of those small communities have had to open themselves up to the world around them. They are overwhelmed, and humbled, at the number of Christian groups who show up each week and get to work.
They have specifically mentioned the church groups which is why I mentioned it, but what surprised me most is the lack of blame. They appreciate the efforts of the government, FEMA. As Mr. Jay put it - no one can practice for a 90,000 square mile disaster. You just can't.
People are very frustrated with the insurance companies, but mentioned on several occasions the government has to have rules. Even if you don't understand them all, they have been applied fairly and evenly across the board. Regardless of how you feel about the President, he has visited these areas hardest hit so far a total of 11 times. They may not like him, but they feel like he at least cares.
Well, this will wrap up most of what I have to say about our trip to the Gulf. It was a life-changing event. I still have not processed all that I saw and heard. It still makes me cry to tell others of it. But I will tell you, I am a better person for having been there. These people have touched our hearts and shown us a much more clear meaning of character, and of trust.
I'll be out of touch for the next few days - having a Sister's Week! I hope you all have as much fun in the coming days as we will be!
-cindy August 22 The People, part 1The most important part of any recovery process, I believe, is being able to talk about what happened. During our instruction period we were told if the people we were working for wanted to talk then that was to become our priority. Not a problem with me . . . I love to listen to people's stories!
We arrived on the job-site and were shortly greeted by Gerald. There was the usual small talk: the roof leaked in a couple of places even though FEMA had placed a huge tarp on the roof within weeks of the storm, the house had been flooded with 4 1/2 feet of water inside, over 6 outside, his father had built the house himself in the 1950's, the tongue and groove walls and roof are what had brought it through the storm standing.
As we worked together a bond began to form. We broke for lunch, went back to the camp to eat, then returned as two groups in two vans. Most of the kids, my son and I were in the first van. As soon as we arrived Gerald waved us into the house to meet Michele. We didn't leave for about 3 hours. They needed to talk, wanted to tell their story.
Harrowing, heroic, what a story they had to tell! I have replayed over and over the tales they told. About choosing to turn off their radios - people were calling to report their where-abouts as they were drowning so their bodies could be located - they couldn't stand to hear it any longer. Watching a four foot wave wash across the field toward the house with complete disbelief (they were 10 miles inland). Trying to find shoes so they could get out of the house - Michele could only find one pair that matched - six-inch platforms (she called them her hooker shoes)! Scrambling over downed trees, whipping power lines they prayed were dead to get to the safety of a police car a block or so away. They both mentioned how the scene just keeps replaying in their minds.
Michele is a trauma nurse. She was called in to help identify bodies. She said she had no idea what rolling around in flood waters could do to a body. She sees these images in her sleep, been a long time since she could sleep well. If those scenes have that affect on a trauma nurse - - well, I can't imagine it, just can't.
Gerald and Michele are the kind of people you can count on when you need someone. As soon as they got their house into a somewhat livable condition they opened it up as a distribution center. Anything they could scavenge or get donated was made available to anyone who needed it. And they delivered it themselves. They and another couple made Thanksgiving Dinners for 500 people, on an apartment-sized stove and three microwaves! They smoked 84 turkeys, made all the fixin's, then delivered the meals. All foods were donated.
Amazingly, people were not the only beneficiaries of their charity. As they were fleeing the floodwaters, they rescued any pets they came across. Michele also cleaned up the local shelter in the aftermath. A sad job, carrying out and burying all of those creatures who were abandoned and forgotten in the panic.
I am still left speechless by their generosity, and by their resilience. They were so gracious and so grateful. A truly lovely couple.
It's hard to write some of this, being one who finds herself totally immersed in what they are feeling as they talk. I will admit that most evenings I retreated to the showers and cried as I replayed the day. We also had the opportunity to have a speaker come talk to us one evening. His tale took over three hours to tell, and all of us, kids and adults, were glued to his story. I will try to retell some of it in my next entry. He said it best when he warned us "telling this again and again is like pulling the scab off a wound. It starts to bleed again, but it also gets a little smaller each time."
I am so much more aware of my blessings. I am indeed blessed! -cindy
August 09 SpeechlessWe're back safe and sound. I've spent the last two or three days staring at this page not knowing where to start and what exactly to say. How do you describe broken homes, broken people, broken spirits? How do you experience what these people have experienced and come out with such resilience?
I am so very proud of the kids that went with us. They worked so hard, never needed to be asked to do something. They worked side by side with no arguing, no snide remarks to each other. The hardest thing for us to do was get them to stop and cool off. Everyone of them gave 100 percent each and every day.
The statistics for Waveland, Mississippi state that 100 percent of the commercial properties were a complete loss, 80 percent of residential buildings were a complete loss. Can you imagine? I couldn't. As we came closer and closer to town on the way down I found myself looking at the twisted remains of appliances and vehicles, RVs and boats lying randomly in the ditches. Most of them burned out remains, heavily vandalized. I was thinking, "what's wrong with these people. If they would clean things up I'd think they'd feel better about everything." Then we got to 'town'. Frames with no walls, no roofs. Beautiful brick staircases leading nowhere. Piles of debris, handpainted street addresses nailed to twisted remains of trees. I was ashamed of myself. How could they worry about the ditches outside of town? They had nothing left, nowhere to begin.
We were staying in a converted Mobile Command Unit at what was once a Senior Citizen Resort. A beautiful location right on the beach. As we drove to Camp Gulfside, we passed lot after lot of ruins. What was once one of the most beautiful drives in the area - stately Southern mansions, seventy of which were on the National Register of Historic Homes - was a ruin of pilings and ragged wrought iron fencing. We felt so helpless. How could we restore hope to these people, this town?
Our group ended up being actually long-awaited. Hubby and son have a small construction business. They've worked together doing roofing, light construction and remodeling, and some concrete work for the past eight years or so. Two of the boys with us are working with them for the summer and my two daughters have roofed with them a time or two. In other words, people who knew what they were doing! Our assignments: run electrical wiring in two houses - hubby and two helpers; and roof a home - son and the rest of us.
The first thing they told us was roofing really wasn't done this time of year in the south, just too hot. They didn't expect us to finish the roof, just work as long as we could without over-heating and get as far along as possible. The next crew would take it from there. Those people just don't know how us mid-westerners are . . .
We headed out to the home, were introduced to the couple, Gerald and Michele (G & M), and got to work. As the day progressed, G stayed with us, working right along, teasing the girls. M served us sweet tea, keeping glasses filled. They stole our hearts. We left for lunch, came back and decided it was just too hot to be up on the roof. Half of us went back to camp, the other half ended up staying several hours just listening to their story. I'll try to post that sometime soon.
When we were all together at camp again it was apparent all reason had left us. The entire crew had decided come hell or high water that roof would be done before we left Friday morning. We had three days. And we did it.
Those people were left without hope. G & M say depression is rampant and impossible to fight. All you see is destruction. There is little left of people's homes. There are no businesses (well, some are coming back, but there has been very little for the past year) so you can't go to your office to get away from it. You can't do much with your home because without a job there is no money. You can't just get in the car and drive - there is only destruction to look at. No escape is possible. What amazes me is that we found very little anger at FEMA and the government in general. As one gentleman put it, no one can practice for a disaster that covers 90,000 square miles. They are frustrated at some of the rules, but state that the rules are applied across the board, no one gets something just because of who they are. Yet, while I say they were left without hope, they are still very gracious. Everyone we encountered was warm and genuine, they are very appreciative of everyone who comes to help them. Grateful is a word we heard every day.
If life hadn't gotten in the way all of us would still be there, lending a hand, lending an ear. I hope everyone who has the opportunity to visit this area will take it. These people need us.
-cindy |
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