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Jewish Community News

News: March 2007

The People on our Gulf Coast Trip

By Kayla Robbins, Kehillah student

The thing that touched me most about the Gulf Coast experience was meeting the incredible people.

The minute we stepped into the airport, we made our first friend in New Orleans: our bus driver Reggie. He was charismatic and hilarious, cracking jokes as he drove. He also had his own story. After most of his house was destroyed, Reggie had lived on the bus he drove until he finally got his FEMA trailer three months before. Despite these obstacles, Reggie was upbeat and positive.

Then there were Charlie and Marti, the Alabama couple that moved south to start the Pathfinder Mission volunteer camp after the Hurricane. They had made the decision to leave their home and lifestyle in order to help others, and were now permanent residents. Although devout Christians, they were welcoming and accepting. Charlie told a story of how he, at a Christian mission, had gotten a shipment of supplies from a Jewish synagogue and sent it to a Vietnamese Buddhist temple. He chuckled, “So there you see, it’s not about faith or beliefs, it’s about neighbors helping neighbors.”

Kathleen organized the volunteer work we did each day. She had also left a comfortable job and life to live in Waveland and help rebuild. She herself manages over 900 cases and works round the clock helping this community get back on its feet. Each night we met with her and she shared inspiring and heart-wrenching stories.

On our lunch break from cleaning out the eaves of a house one day, we met the home’s owner, Beau. Beau had been in Afghanistan, serving in the navy when the storm hit, and he had not been allowed to go home because it was said to be too dangerous. He lived with his father Henry, a policeman, who during the storm had held on to a windowsill for four hours while another woman held onto his waist. Beau had come home and redone the entire inside of their house for his father, and was taking classes at a community college. He told us that the wait for laborers was three years, and how appreciative he was of the work we were doing. He was kind and inspiring, and as a group we decided to get him a housewarming gift to show how much of an impact he had made on us. In the card we wrote him we included that his caring and determination will never be forgotten by any of us.

Before I came on this trip, I was under the mentality that a little bit doesn’t have a big impact, that there was so much to be done that anything we did would be a tiny drop into a huge ocean. But I was proven completely wrong. One man, whose house we worked on, called multiple times to thank us, saying that what we had done in a matter of hours would have taken him six months. We did make a difference.
I also learned a lot about the people of the South.

One man we heard speak said that in the days after the storm, “You never heard anyone say, ‘Pity me.’ It was always ‘What can I do to help you?’” We saw this attitude all the time in New Orleans and Mississippi, along with an attitude of great appreciation. While working on one yard, every car that drove past waved, smiled, blew kisses or leaned over and yelled thank you to us. Hurricane Katrina destroyed a lot of things in the South, but the unique spirit of its residents was still very much alive.

Most importantly, the people we met in the South taught us all to cherish and be grateful for everything we have today, because it may be gone tomorrow.

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