Worthwhile Road Trip

More help is coming in from several places. I'm traveling north this week, starting in New Hampshire on Monday, to collect donated items, mostly furniture. My aunt and uncle are giving me dressers, bedroom sets, a dining table, sofas, love seats and many other smaller household things. We're going to load up a UHaul, and then I'm going to head south, stopping in Springfield, Mass, where a friend is going to give me a car load of items. Then it's on to New York, to meet up with Erin Donovan, another volunteer with whom I've started the St. Bernard Recovery Corp., a non-profit geared towards assisting individuals and families in St. Bernard Parish. Erin has gathered a lot of things from family and friends, including more furniture. By this point, I expect the UHaul to be full, and Erin and I are then going to hit the road for New Orleans. All of this stuff is going to go to families in need, who are moving or will soon be moving back into their homes. It's exciting, and I can't wait to share what people are so willing to give with the people down here in the New Orleans area.

As we work to get SBRC up and running, I continue to be amazed at how much people want to help. I'll have more coming on SBRC, what we'll be doing, what we're all about and how you can help. We will also have a web site which will do the same. For me, this road trip is another piece to the start of what I hope is a lasting and regular resource for people who just need some help, and some hope. It'll be a hectic few days, as we have to be back in New Orleans by Thursday night so that we can unload the truck on Friday, but it's going to be very worth it. And hey, if you have household goods or furniture that can be donated, you never know, we might be able to find a way to get it here. There's always a way! People like Ann and Lawrence below can use it.

Come and See

We had sat in her trailer for 45 minutes or so already, talking about a number of things, from her life before Katrina, her life after, the struggles of her family and kids. We talked about work, her financial situation, what she has and what she may need more of. And we talked about the Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and it was during that part that Ann Robin said the words that hit me harder than anything else she had said to that point. Those words were, “come and see”.

Ann wasn’t talking to myself or to Tom, another volunteer who was with me in Ann’s trailer early Wednesday evening. She was talking to all the people out there who are may not know where or what St. Bernard Parish is. She was talking to people who may think to themselves, “it’s two years later, how bad can it be. She was talking to people who may just say whenever they see a Katrina-related story on the news, “I’m sick of this story, it’s old news”.

Of course no person in this country is at fault if they haven’t come here. Not everyone can, nor should everyone need to. And most have their own lives and families to care about and take care of everyday, and that’s how it should be. But I think what Ann said has meaning, even some power, from the perspective that it won’t hurt anyone to know that not only does St. Bernard Parish exist, but that there are hundreds of good, kind-hearted, hard working people here who just want a normal life again. And, it might even help residents of St. Bernard Parish if more people do know that.

Ann is concerned, but not down. Ann is sad, but not bitter. Ann is frustrated, but not resentful. She, like many of the other people and families still living in FEMA Trailers with no word on when or if they’ll get their Road Home money, or any other form of assistance for that matter, just wants to know that her country cares, that they’re not forgotten. This seems to be a theme lately. I’ve written of similar sentiment several times now as of late, but there’s a reason for that. Time is passing, and things aren’t changing or progressing fast enough. There’s advancement in bits and pieces, sure. Good progress, too. But not enough. How can I say there is progress when, on this particular day, I stood in a house that is nothing but studs and plywood with a mother and daughter who shared countless memories of what their home used to look like? How can I say there is progress when I sat in a trailer for an hour with Ann, looking around and wondering how her and her 16 year old son inhabit this thing day after day after day without going insane?

I picked up the newspaper early today, as I usually do, and on the cover of the Times-Picayune was a story on a project called Make It Right. Make It Right is an effort driven by a consortium of architects, special donors, and the actor, Brad Pitt, all of whom are donating millions of dollars and hours of their time to build 150 homes in the Lower 9^th Ward. 150 homes, that means that 150 individuals and/or families will be helped, will take a huge step in getting their lives back in order. That’s wonderful. It truly is, as the 9^th Ward needs help. But oh by the way, so too does St. Bernard Parish. Unfortunately, St. Bernard is not the beneficiary of the media’s narrow-minded lense into reality, where it seems 90% of the dialogue and pictures and text we are fed focuses on one particular area.

Does this make Brad Pitt and the people he’s working with evil? Not at all. I commend Pitt for his interest in the recovery efforts and all he’s doing. I just say, and say loudly, there is more going on here than the needs of one 12 or 15 block radius. Much more.

Ann Robin said those words in her trailer on Wednesday, and I’m echoing them, to everyone who thinks things are ok or normal here, or who doesn’t know what St. Bernard Parish is. Come and see. Then maybe we can all ‘make it right’.

A Family's Home

Lawrence DeHarde is the principal at the Lynn Oaks School in the lower eastern part of St. Bernard Parish. A lifelong resident of the Parish, DeHarde landed the job at Lynn Oaks this past spring after being out of work for a year following Hurricane Katrina. He's been working in education either as a teacher, assistant principal or principal for over 23 years now, but has faced by far the biggest challenge of his life in trying to get his life back together.

DeHarde and his wife, his parents and his brother and brother's wife all lived within about 3 blocks of one another, in the same neighborhood of Chalmette. Various other niece's and nephew's were also close by. All lost their homes to Katrina. Furthermore, the DeHarde boys' (father and sons) homes were victimized by the Murphy Oil spill. Highly destructive yet hardly known outside of the Parish, the Murphy spill contaminated several hundred homes in Chalmette after one of the refineries drums lifted up in the storm and spilled thousands upon thousands of gallons of crude oil. Question: when watching and hearing all the news about Hurricane Katrina in the days and even weeks that followed, do you recall hearing about an oil spill? This was, by far, the largest land-based oil spill in U.S. history. And what news did it make? Not much, nor does it to this day.

Yet here are men like DeHarde, hard working and honest, and without a thing left from his home. Same for his brother, same for his parents. The Oil Company? They have offered and continue to offer families whose homes were damaged in the ballpark of $20,000 restitution. What does that get you? Sole responsibility in cleaning up your home, and no legal recourse or right to ever go back and sue Murphy Oil. As Mr. DeHarde so aptly put it, "that'd be the most expensive $20,000 I ever got." So he turned it down. In the meantime, however, his house still sits in a sludge of dried up mud and oil, and the EPA has ruled that the dirt in his yard is hazardous.

DeHarde's father passed away two months ago, a victim, according to his son, of post-Katrina emotional stress. Then, with the younger DeHarde unaware, the state had his dad's house bulldozed, saying it, too, was a hazard.

I've known Mr. DeHarde for awhile now. I visit him on occasion at the school, and give some donated items or cash that can go towards the kids, the classrooms. He's always extremely grateful. And he wants the school taken care of first. I just wish I could do more for him, for his wife. Mr. DeHarde, in a way, has sort of become the face of this entire storm and its aftermath for me. He knows some folks care..... me, other volunteers, etc. But for the most part, he feels let down and abandoned. If only more people really knew some of the hell that is greater New Orleans right now.

(Note: walking through homes like Mr. DeHarde's, and his brother's, the feeling is totally surreal. You see things that your house had when you grew up, pictures, mementos, toys, special furniture, and you look them in this state and even though they're someone else's, think to yourself no way is this normal, or right, or ok. A few times today, I literally chuckled a bit, and Mr. DeHarde knew why and what it meant. You're just in so much shock you don't really know what to say, and I just laughed at how absurd the whole thing was. Holding his wedding picture in my hands, though (see below, left), no chuckles. Just quiet. Mr. DeHarde is going to be ok, though. The beauty of the people here, particularly in St. Bernard, they'll accept nothing less than getting through and not only surviving, but doing well again).