Chatham, Massachusetts

Hurricane Katrina Task Force

Work begins on teen mission to Mississippi

The Hurricane Katrina Task Force, working with the Faith In Action Sunday Chefs, will send a group of teenagers to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in April to help residents rebuild from the August 2005 storm.
    The group will be based at Mission on the Bay, a relief program geared for teenagers at Christ Episcopal Church in Bay St. Louis, one of the hardest hit areas in Mississippi.
    Volunteers will spend their Easter break, from April 15-21, in Mississippi. Mission on the Bay is affiliated with Camp Coast Care, the Lutheran-Episcopal relief agency which St. Christopher’s has partnered with since the hurricane hit. The group will live in six-person tents on church grounds and be responsible for clean-up, debris removal and construction in the area.
    Tentative plans call for 10 teens and 3 adult chaperones to make the trip.
    “We’re going to need a lot of help to make this happen,” said Ali Crockett, who chairs the hurricane task force. From now until April, the task force will meet weekly to plan fundraising events and coordinate trip details.
      If you would like to help, or want more information, please contact Ali or Ilene Bendas, who coordinates the Faith In Action program.  Ali can be reached at (508) 945-3420 or by email at alicat44@comcast.net. Ilene can be reached through the church office at (508) 945-2832 or by email at ibendas@comcast.net or ibendas@verizon.net.

Volunteers help with rebuilding homes

in church's recent trek to Mississippi

Editor’s note: The Hurricane Katrina Task Force of St. Christopher’s Church sponsored a volunteer mission to Camp Coast Care in Long Beach, Miss. Nov. 12-18. The committee appealed to volunteers from other churches in the area.  In the end, six people attended: Dick Noble, Kate Hansen and Rebecca Hutchings of Chatham; Allison Noyes of Brewster; Barbara Malin of Dennis; and parishioner Tim Weller of Harwich. Tim kept a journal during the trip. This is his report.

On the surface, there’s little in common between Cape Cod and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The gulf coast – 1,600 miles south and west of the Cape – is deep, deep South, a land of Confederate flags, shrimp, grits and strange accents. By comparison, the Cape seems downright Yankee.
      But there are striking similarities. Both are tourist destinations. Both feature miles of pristine beach, quaint seaside towns and picturesque shorelines.
     Both know all about hurricanes and the damage they can do. Then, 15 months ago, Hurricane Katrina came ashore at Bay St. Louis.
     And that changed everything.   

                              *********

     On the morning of Aug. 28, 2005, Katrina, packing 140 mph winds, made landfall. The winds blew for 17 hours straight, pushing millions of tons of water before it. The storm surge eventually reached 28 feet high, flooding communities 6-12 miles inland. Ninety miles of coastline was obliterated. In Mississippi alone, 236 people died. 
     State and local officials say it will take at least 10 more years to rebuild the region.
     “It’s hard to believe that there is still this level of damage,” says Dick Noble, a retired marketing executive who splits his time between Boston and Chatham. This is Dick’s second trip to Camp Coast Care. He made the trip with St. Christopher’s members Pat Cass and Marie Williams last May.
     “It still looks like a war zone. It’s a little better, but not by much.”
                                 ********

     Ask why so little has been done, and you get different answers. Indifference.  Political incompetence. Red tape. Bureaucratic bumbling.
     Earlier this year, after months of missteps and false starts, the Bush Administration and Congress finally appropriated almost $6 billion to help rebuild the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
     The feds asked only that Mississippi account for the money. Show us your plan, they said.
     Just one problem: the state government in Jackson, and the dozens of local governments, boards and commissions, can’t agree on a plan. Where do you rebuild?  How do you rebuild? What about this road?  What about that school?
     Until they work things out, little gets done.
     Enter the volunteers.

                                      ********

     During any given week, thousands of volunteers from across the country fan out across the Gulf Coast.
      Some are builders. Others are carpenters, plumbers and electricians. But most aren’t in the trades. Back home, they belong to local chapters of Habitat For Humanity, Hands On and the Rotary.
     Barbara Malin of Dennis is typical. In her 50s, and with no particular building skills, she nonetheless volunteered for this trip. “I feel I can help,” she says. “I don’t know what I can do, but I can do something. I can make a difference.” During the week, she did everything from dig trenches at a residential construction site to wipe down dining tables.
     Most volunteers are affiliated with churches.  Church relief camps have sprouted up and down the coast: Besides Episcopalians, the Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Mennonites and the UUs are everywhere.
     These are the groups who filled the breach immediately after the storm. Like St. Christopher’s they sent food, clothing, doctors, counselors, cash and volunteers, while the Red Cross and FEMA spun their wheels back in Washington.
     They saved lives. They went home and spread the word. And then they returned, this time with hammers, generators and saws.

                                     *********                       

     St. Christopher’s has had a strong relationship with Camp Coast Care, dating back to last December, when church volunteers Vi Fellman, Steve Keenan and myself drove a truckload of food, supplies and merchandise gift cards to the camp.
     Since then, we’ve sent a second truckload of supplies and sponsored a volunteer trip last May.  On this trip, we donated $1,300 to the camp raised at the Noteables concert in October, along with a $300 from the Outreach Committee for pay our room and board (the Katrina task force picked up the $650 tab for our rental van).
     Camp Coast Care is based in Long Beach, Miss., on the site of an Episcopal school. The camp sprung up in the school’s gymnasium three days after Katrina, serving as a distribution and medical center. As needs changed, the camp changed, and its mission now is long-term rebuilding.
     The camp is an eclectic place. Run by a joint team of Episcopalians and Lutherans, it can sleep and feed up to 120 volunteers. Volunteers get a cot and three meals a day.  If they’re lucky, they squeeze in a three-minute shower --  if the hot water holds out.
     Sleeping arrangements are mostly “coed” (men and women sleep side by side in rows of cots). Partitions divide each row. One row is reserved for women only. Lights come on at 6:30 a.m. Work details last from 8 or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Lights go out at 10 p.m.
     After work, volunteer Episcopal priests hold daily Eucharist or Compline services. Like everything else, attendance is voluntary – but most people attend.
     The clergy – there are a handful volunteering any given week – lead by example. They shed their collars for jeans and work boots. They cook, clean and otherwise help out with the chores. After hours, some share in a glass of wine and tell bad jokes (“there were these three guys on their way to heaven…”).
     In short, they are a calming, steady force.

***********

     There are volunteers -- and then there are unsung volunteers.
     Allison Noyes and Rebecca Hutchings, both juniors at Chatham High School, fill the latter.
     “We volunteered because we wanted to make a difference,” Allison says. “We wanted to help.”
     They did, and in a very special way.
     To sustain itself, an outfit like Camp Coast Care needs volunteers to help keep the camp itself running. Someone’s got to help prepare meals, wash dishes and wipe down tables. Someone’s got to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floors.  Without that, Camp Coast Care would close within days.
     Understandably, camp directors find it difficult to fill such slots.
     “People come here with lofty ideals,” says Michael Magargel, the camp’s volunteer coordinator.  “They’ve taken time off work or paid their own way to get here. Most don’t think about scrubbing pots and pans or cleaning the bathrooms.”
     So the first order of business each morning is to find volunteers willing to do that kind of work. No other assignments are made until those jobs are filled.
     Guess who raises their hands first?
     “It wasn’t what I thought of at first,” says Rebecca. “But soon enough, it felt like home.”
     Volunteers took to the girls immediately. They looked out for them, kept them under their wing.
     At the end of the girls’ time, hugs, applause and more than a few tears were shed.
     Allison and Rebecca had made a big difference. 

                                    ********

     Sarah Caldwell, 79, stepped out of her FEMA trailer on the morning of  Nov. 14  to see what the fuss was all about.
     Next door, on an abandoned lot, a group of 10 camp volunteers assembled to build a foundation for Sarah’s new “Katrina Cabin,” the name given to mostly prefab homes springing up along the coast. The lot, at the corner of 32^nd Avenue and 29^th Street in Gulfport, is six blocks inland from the gulf.
     On Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina’s unrelenting winds and storm surge eventually reached that intersection, sweeping away everything Sarah Caldwell owned.
     Sarah watches as the group takes direction from a construction foreman everyone calls “Walter.”
     Walter Schendel– also known as “Ditch” for the ditches he often asks volunteers to dig – splits the group into teams and tells one team to see if they can locate Sarah’s old underground sewer line.
     “How do we find it?” asks a volunteer.
     “Start digging,” Ditch replies.
     After an hour, the grumbling starts. Two hours later, and still no sewer pipe. The diggers have turned sarcastic and snarky. “We didn’t come all the way down here to dig ditches,” a volunteer from California says.
     Sensing a revolt, Walter calls a break.
     “Gather around, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round.”
 

********

    And he begins.
     “Since Katrina, I’ve worked with thousands of volunteers just like you. Now hear this: You guys are the only ones who are getting things done.
     “You,” he says, turning to face each volunteer, “are the ones who are making things happen.  Everything you do, no matter how seemingly insignificant, makes a huge difference.
     “Look around you,” he continues, surveying the neighborhood.  “This is not some third-world country tens of thousands of miles away. This is America! These are Americans! These are our own brothers and sisters. And right now, we’re the only ones who can help them.
     “These people depend on us.  Sarah Caldwell depends on us.”
     Walter stops. The group is silent.
     “We’ll find the pipe,” I say. And 25 minutes later we do.
     Sarah Caldwell will get her new house, after all. One down, thousands to go.

Mississippi Journal

Volunteers report devastation, determination

in towns annihilated by Hurricane Katrina

    Steve Keenan, Vi Fellman and Tim Weller left St. Christopher’s Dec. 11 to deliver a 16-foot truck filled with canned food and new blankets to a Lutheran- Episcopal relief agency in Long Beach, Miss. The agency, called Camp Coast Care, treats hundreds of Hurricane Katrina survivors each week.  Your generous donations made an immediate difference. Tim kept a journal during the six-day 3,000-mile round trip.  This is his account.

(To see photos, click here.)

                             AN INVITATION

“C’mon, I’ll show you around.”

Dan Lester, a graying, slightly overweight marketing consultant from Huntsville, Ala., is one of Camp Coast Care’s resident tour guides. Of the many jobs at the camp – the informal name for the Lutheran Episcopal Disaster Response mission -- it’s one of the most difficult. The burnout rate is high.  Staff members don’t like driving through the area.  It’s just too depressing.

Only a few visitors get to take the tour -- there is some sort of unspoken test you must first pass. But driving 1,500 miles from Chatham to Long Beach and unloading 10 pallets of food and blankets apparently counts for something.  We pass the test.

“Hey, I don’t mind,” Lester says when we thank him for taking the time. “I’ve gotten used to it. It’s worth it if you guys spread the word when you get back home.”

We climb into Lester’s red 1995 Jeep Cherokee and head for Pass Christian, formerly a town of 6,000 on the Gulf of Mexico, two miles to the west.

                    INTO THE HURRICANE ZONE

About 1,400 miles southwest of Chatham, after 25 hours on the road, on I-59 just south of Hattiesburg, the landscape begins to change.  It creeps up on you subtly until bam!  It’s all right there in front of you:  Tops of towering, slender yellow pines snapped off.  Trees knocked to the ground, crumpled guardrails, twisted sheets of metal that once were highway signs. 

Every few minutes, we pass new, white, Ford F-150s towing white trailers, heading south.  The words “FEMA UNIT” are stenciled on the trucks’ doors.

Ten miles south of Hattiesburg, just off the interstate in a clearing on our right, we glimpse hundreds of these trailers parked in a cleared, muddy field.  It is a FEMA staging area. These trailers are towed south to house the thousands displaced by the storm. So far, only 12,000 of the 25,000 promised trailers are up and running.  The federal government estimates as many as 400,000 people may be eligible to live in them. Do the math and you come up with 16 people for each trailer. That doesn’t add up -- there’s going to be trouble down that road. 

We have arrived in the hurricane zone.  It is Dec. 13, 107 days since Katrina came ashore. We’re still 140 miles north of the coast. Things are getting a little surreal.

                                    OUR HOST

David and Mary Gay Boedecker live in a small, ranch-style house in McNeil, Miss., a rural community nine miles north of Picayune.  Mary Gay is the junior warden of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Picayune.  A granddaughter’s ear infection has forced Mary Gay to Houston for the week, so David will be our only host. 

“We like living in the country,” says Boedecker, 56, a retired Lockheed Martin aerospace engineer who helped develop launch platforms for satellites. “No matter where you’re from, country people are all the same.” 

“We lost 17 trees back here in the storm,” he says, gesturing to his back yard, which is littered with logs and limbs. 

Boedecker’s cowboy boots, 10-gallon hat, Texas twang and booming laugh belie his smarts. A graduate of Texas A&M, he clearly knows a lot about a lot. During his career, he pulled extended stints at Cape Canaveral and the John C. Stennis Space Center in neighboring Hancock County. He hunts, fishes, loves to cook and, in a pinch, could probably build a house by himself.  

David’s a talker, but initially doesn’t offer much insight into his own opinions.  Perhaps he’s somewhat wary of his strange northern houseguests.  But over time, he gradually warms to us.

And we to him.  David is likeable character. He drives a late-model Chevy Silverado with a decal of the Episcopal shield on the tailgate.  The truck’s XM satellite radio is tuned to the “Nashville Christmas” channel.

“You know, this is Bush Country down here,” he says, relaxing his guard a little. “But Bush couldn’t get elected dog catcher now.”

                      PICAYUNE, MISSISSIPPI

Named for a Spanish coin called a picayune by the French inhabitants of New Orleans, the town of Picayune has become a bedroom community for its more famous neighbor 50 miles to the southwest.

At the turn of the century, the town was a key railroad junction where virgin yellow pine was shipped all over the world.  Today, Picayune is known for its cattle ranches – and an exploding population.  Since Katrina, the population has mushroomed from about 15,000 to 45,000. Survivors from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast stream in daily.

The population shift has staggered Picayune. Its infrastructure and support services simply cannot handle the influx. Traffic gridlock is the norm.  Restaurants are jammed at all hours. Jobs go begging because merchants can’t pay what storm victims collect from the federal government.

Damage from Katrina is everywhere. Sustained winds estimated at 110 mph ripped gaping holes in buildings, tore off roofs and knocked down trees.  Throughout residential neighborhoods, FEMA trailers are parked in front lawns of damaged houses.

“You know, the eye of the storm passed right over Picayune,” Boedecker says. “We got a lot of wind damage.  But we were lucky.”

                 ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

St. Paul’s is located on Goodyear Street in Picayune.  It is an attractive, brick church with a sanctuary that seats more than St. Christopher’s.  But the church has had its share of trouble. Several years ago, about half the membership split to form their own church after a dispute with the rector. With no full-time pastor, St. Paul’s drifted and slipped into a decline. 

Last summer, in a final attempt to shore up St. Paul’s, the Mississippi Archdiocese decided to appoint – and help pay the salary of – a full-time rector.

Enter Kathleen K. Potts.  The Rev. Potts is bright and energetic.  “We’re turning this place upside down,” she says proudly. “We’re growing.  This is an exciting time.”

Aside from some water damage, St. Paul’s escaped the brunt of the storm.  Since arriving in late September, Rev. Potts has held regular weekly services.  The church’s school, St. Paul’s Day School, (preschool through third grade) hasn’t missed a day.

Rev. Potts, consulting with our own rector, Brian McGurk, decided the $2,000 St. Christopher’s sent her to help her congregation should be redirected to Camp Coast Care. Rev. Potts personally bought gift cards with the check and one of her parishioners delivered them to the camp.

                PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI

To see devastation like this is to be struck dumb. 

Pass Christian does not exist anymore. It’s gone. Block after block, street after street, as far as the eye can see. Everything’s in ruins.  And this is just one town. The damage extends 75 miles west along the coast, through Gulfport, Biloxi and other lesser known Gulf towns, all the way across the Alabama border. 

Vi Fellman, who as a Chatham firefighter has seen her share of destruction and suffering, put it best: “I just can’t wrap my brain around this,” she kept saying.  “I just can’t wrap my brain around it.”  

Our guide, Dan Lester, lets us film and take photos.  Just one ground rule. “If you see someone who looks like they might be a property owner, please don’t take their picture or take pictures of their property,” he says. “Let them try to keep some dignity.”

As Lester drives slowly through the streets, he remarks on progress he sees.  “You should have seen this street a week or so ago,” he says. “This is a 100 percent improvement!” We are left to contemplate:  If this is 100 percent better, what was it like before?

Lester has been here almost from Day 1.  When asked why he left a successful business to sleep on a cot, stand in a chow line and do back-breaking work day after day, he says simply, “I was called.”

A husband and father, he has worked out a deal with his wife. He’s in Long Beach about three weeks a month, then home for a week to 10 days, then back to Long Beach.

 Although he won’t admit it, Lester – along with other staffers and volunteers --   keeps score. After all, Camp Coast Care isn’t the only agency operating in the area. 

These folks know who stepped up.  They know who fumbled.  It’s an interesting list:  They praise Home Depot and Wal-Mart, both damaged but staying open somehow, giving away building materials and supplies.  The Mennonites and the Salvation Army, who operate their own relief agencies, get credit for being efficient and caring for the neediest first.

FEMA, of course, gets a thumbs down, as does the Red Cross, which comes in for withering criticism. Slow to arrive, slow to react, obsessed with its own security, bogged down in bureaucracy and early to depart.  “I wouldn’t give another penny to the Red Cross,” Lester says.

Later, David Boedecker tries to explain it another way.  “The Red Cross and FEMA aren’t set up to deal with a situation like this,” he says. “Their culture, their systems, prevents them from being effective on the ground.”

Lester delivers a running monologue as he drives us through the streets. Suicides are up.  Mental illness is on the rise.  At night, the area takes on trappings of the Wild West. Young armed thugs roam the darkness, robbing and raping.  That shocks us.

“You have to understand that some of these people have lost everything,” Lester says.  “They’ve got nothing. Their lives are ruined and they have no future. When this happens to people, some get really desperate.”

At about 12:45 p.m. Central Time, on Dec. 14, we leave this sad place where so many lost their lives and head back to Long Beach.

One question is on our minds:  After three and a half months, in the United States of America, why does this place still look like this?

                           CAMP COAST CARE

Camp Coast Care bustles. Located on the grounds of the Coast Episcopal School on Espy Avenue in Long Beach, the camp operates a food distribution center, a free medical clinic and acts as a clearing house for hundreds of volunteers and contractors who tear out wet walls, tarp leaking roofs and clean up homes.  In some ways it looks like a military base camp in a war zone. Since Katrina, the center has cared for 55,000 people.   It provides food for between 2,000 and 3,000 survivors a day and can house up to 125 volunteers, who sleep on cots in the school’s gymnasium.

 A core of Episcopal and Lutheran priests keeps the center humming.  The Rev. Joe Robinson oversees the entire operation. Jennifer Knight runs the medical clinic, which is open 24/7. Van Bankston, cell phone perpetually to his ear, deals with logistics. The Rev. Janet Ott is in charge of distribution. Diane Livingston handles the volunteers. The Episcopalians in the group are as comfortable driving a fork lift as they are delivering the Eucharist. 

They are wonderful examples of “faith in action.” 

Volunteers are everywhere, some napping, many grabbing lunch, others preparing for afternoon assignments.

The camp needs a steady supply of volunteers. On this day, some of us share lunch with a group from Maryland, numbering 10 strong from three different Episcopal churches. They will be here for a week, working as a team. They go through orientation together and work the same projects together.  Bankston says that’s the model the camp seeks: between six and 10 volunteers from one area who are willing to work for a week and live at the camp.  

We start thinking about forming a group when we get back to Chatham.

                       REBUILDING MISSISSIPPI

David Boedecker turns on the living room TV and tunes to live congressional hearings on the federal government’s response to Katrina. It is late in the afternoon.   We are just back from Long Beach, jacked up, but emotionally drained. Vi calls it “wired tired.” Boedecker watches for a few minutes and then flips the channel in disgust.

“They’ve forgotten us,” he says bitterly. “All they do is talk about New Orleans and blame each other.”

“Look,” he continues, “when we had a rocket blow up on the launch pad, we’d make sure we found out what went wrong, but then we would fix it and move forward. That’s not happening here. 

“All the attention is on New Orleans.  Make no mistake, they have some serious problems.  But we do too.

“We’re not asking much.  We will rebuild and we’ll do it by ourselves, no matter what it takes.  Just don’t make it harder than it already is. Don’t put roadblocks in our way.”

                            HEADING HOME

Early the next morning, Dec. 15, we pack up and start the long drive back to Chatham. We leave with many more questions than answers. We only know this:  It has been 109 days since Katrina made landfall, and this region will need every bit of help we as a country and as a community can give it – for hundreds of days still to come. 

Contact Tim Weller at timweller@comcast.net.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina

Following are announcements, news stories and information on donations and volunteers to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane relief: U.S. bishops voice gratitude; describe fund use

A December update from the director of Episcopal Relief and Development with the bishops of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Diocese of Mississippi. To read full statement, click here.

Diocese partners with Mississippi church to aid rebuilding

The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts has partnered with the Church of the Redeemer in Biloxi, Miss., an Episcopal church twice destroyed by hurricanes, most recently by Katrina. The Diocese will organize work teams to help the Redeemer congregation rebuild.
    Financial donations to help this effort may by made by printing the linked form(in Microsoft Word format or Adobe .pdf), filling it out, and sending it with your contribution to the Diocese for Mississippi, P.O. Box 23107, Jackson, MS, 39225.

U.S Episcopal churches send help to victims

The U.S. Episcopal Church has reacted quickly and forcefully to the tragedy unfolding along the Gulf Coast.
    The church has established a link so St. Christopher’s
parishioners can donate directly to hurricane relief. The website is www.er-d.org.
    In addition, The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate, has sent a message to bishops, clergy and congregations around the country “that we might be a community united in prayer and service during this time.”
    “At this time let us be exceedingly mindful that bearing one another’s burdens and sharing one another’s suffering is integral to being members of Christ’s body,” The Most Rev. Griswold said in a message released by the Episcopal News Service. “I call upon every member of our church to reach out in prayer and tangible support to our brothers and sisters as they live through these overwhelming days of loss and begin to face the difficult challenges of the future.”
    To read the full message, click here.