Charities team spent Christmas among ruins

Christmas on the Gulf Coast was a particularly painful time for countless people affected by Hurricane Katrina, but a team of volunteers from Catholic Charities in the Albany Diocese provided what comfort they could.

"Christmas was very depressing for some of the people," reported Shelly A. Ford, a member of the fifth such team to travel from the Diocese to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to work at the Catholic Community Services Center there.

The team was in Baton Rouge from Dec. 7-28.

Looking to help

Miss Ford, an employee of Catholic Charities' New Day Art program for children in Albany, is a recent graduate of nursing school. She had started looking for an agency in Louisiana she could volunteer with right after Hurricane Katrina hit last August because "I wanted to go to help."

Even though she wasn't chosen for the first few teams of Catholic Charities caseworkers who each spent three weeks helping survivors find food, shelter, medical care and other aid, "I was very persistent!" she declared. "I told them, 'Just keep me on that list.'"

Miss Ford was eager to volunteer because she has eight children of her own, including four teenagers still living at home. She could only imagine how desperate she would be in a situation like that faced by the hurricane survivors.

Hurry to help

Fellow team member Luther Herring echoed her thoughts: "I wanted to go [to Louisiana] as soon as possible. I wish I'd gotten down there a lot sooner."

A case manager at Catholic Charities' DePaul Residence, an Albany single-room-occupancy residence for the homeless, he is used to working with "those who are hard to serve."

He thought his background in helping people in dire situations, from domestic violence victims to the formerly incarcerated, would serve him well in Louisiana.

State of shock

Neither volunteer was prepared for the devastation they encountered in both the physical landscape of the Gulf Coast and the emotional landscape of its people.

"Some people were still in a state of shock. It was 100 days after the hurricane, but the only thing missing was the [flood] water," Miss Ford recalled.

On a visit to New Orleans, "we saw people sitting in cars crying, boats in houses, roofs up in tree branches -- and you didn't hear anything. You didn't hear any birds. You didn't see any ants."

Poor hit worst

Mr. Herring was saddened to realize that, even before the flood, "the people from New Orleans were poorer than poor. The houses were shacks. If they paid $100 a month, that was too much. They had a seventh-, eighth- or ninth-grade education. [Here,] a single male can get social services -- not so down there."

Although the team members had been asked to take pictures to document what they saw, Mr. Herring couldn't bring himself to do so.

"You have to see it in 3-D," he explained. "In my worst nightmares, I couldn't imagine what it was like. But people still have their spirit about them."

He found that spirit in many of the people he helped through the Catholic Charities service center. "Southern hospitality is thick down there," he reported. "That is really missing in the north. After all they went through, they still held onto that."

Christmastime

Miss Ford was delighted to boost that enthusiasm by helping with a Christmas drive that provided gifts for 3,500 people.

She joked that, with her large family, she knew how to stretch a dollar, so she'd get $500 from the fund to spend at Wal-Mart and come back with piles of presents and a receipt for $499.99.

Still, the people are struggling. With her nursing training, Miss Ford ended up advising several clients to get medical care for conditions like pinkeye that they're now developing. One couple she met had tried to go to Charity Hospital in New Orleans for care, not realizing that it had been destroyed.

Pressure points

Mr. Herring found that host families who have taken in evacuees are now feeling the strain.

"I was interviewing one man in his 60s; his host was in her 80s," he recounted. "When a staff person was talking to the man, the host turned to me and said out of the side of her mouth, 'I'll be glad when he's gone.' The stress of providing hospitality is wearing thin."

Added to that burden was the emotional pain of the first holiday season since the hurricane. "I can't imagine what it will be like now that the Christmas season is over. The Christmas spirit is gone," Mr. Herring noted.

Losses

Miss Ford said that helping anyone who came to the center during the holidays meant first listening to his or her story, and all the stories were painful.

For example, a longshoreman told her that what he missed most was having his six children come to his home for Christmas. His home no longer exists.

"There was so much crying, I brought a box of tissues in every day," Miss Ford remarked. "I cried with them."

Other clients were angry; Miss Ford found that it helped when she pointed out that she'd felt they were important enough to give up Christmas with her family to be on the Gulf Coast. "The world has not forgotten you," she told them.

A man told Mr. Herring that he'd made it through previous storms, so he thought he could "ride out" Hurricane Katrina. He ended up stranded on the roof of his home with his dog for six days with no food or water, worrying that there were sharks in the flood water around him.

Christmas Day

The center was closed on Christmas Day, so the volunteers drove to Lafayette to serve dinner to the homeless there. The pair said it was best to keep busy, since they were missing their own families back home.

"I'd had to get all the stuff together before I left: the Christmas tree up, all the presents lined up on the couch," said Miss Ford. "It was weird being away for Christmas; but, being Christian, my kids understand that Christmas is every day."

In fact, she added wryly, "They kind of like it when I'm not home anyway!"

Mr. Herring said that Christmas "didn't seem like a holiday. We wanted to stay busy and do as much as we could."

Long-term needs

With more than 100 days having passed since the hurricane, the pair said that long-term needs are starting to surface among survivors.

Miss Ford pointed out that people who evacuated from New Orleans to Baton Rouge are "in a foreign land." Just because both cities are in Louisiana doesn't mean evacuees know where to find a grocery store or post office in Baton Rouge.

"One lady said she didn't know what bus to take, so she walked" all the way to the services center, Miss Ford recalled.

Miss Ford met many clients who insisted that she check a box on their intake forms stating that they only intended to stay in Baton Rouge for three to six months before moving back home.

"I don't think they understand the magnitude of what's happened," she observed. "They think New Orleans can be rebuilt in three to six months, and it's just not going to happen. They're going to have to settle where they are for a while."

Lasting impact

Both volunteers said they wouldn't have minded staying longer in Baton Rouge. "It changed me for the better," Mr. Herring stated. "If I had the opportunity to go down there for a year or two, I would."

"I'd do it again -- because I don't think the need is going to be over in 2006 or 2007," Miss Ford added.

Mr. Herring is trying to paint a picture of his time in Baton Rouge for his clients in Albany who may feel they don't have enough in life.

"I meet with teenagers who are caught between doing the right thing and selling drugs or being part of a gang," he remarked. "I brought my experience back to them. I came back with a greater appreciation for Albany, for having family and friends, and having what I have."

(Also on the team that spent the holidays on the Gulf Coast were volunteers Anne Narciso and Len Tarricone. Teams are still being sent; contact diocesan Catholic Charities at 453-6650. Make donations payable to Catholic Charities, with "Hurricane Katrina" in the subject line, and send them to 40 N. Main Ave., Albany, NY 12203.)

(1/12/06) [[In-content Ad]]