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"My Maniac May"

June 16, 2006

Greetings from 24,000 feet, R-Journal readers! Alas, it has been long since my last journal so I have lots to update you all on. My update does not include much from the past couple of weeks, though. After returning home from New Orleans, I’ve been relaxing at home and visiting with friends here in Cleveland. Until today, that is. I’m actually on a plane headed down to Tampa, where I will attend and present at a conference on Disaster Preparedness and Relief at Eckerd College.

Let me digress back to May. After finals (I escaped alive—they actually were not too scathing), I had a few hurried days to prepare for our Rollins Relief trip back to St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana to continue helping local residents remove debris from their flood-damaged homes. I figured that three days would be more than enough time to move out of my dorm room, pack for the trip, and handle a few other last minute details. Wrong. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 14 (Mother’s Day and Commencement at Rollins), and let’s just say that the last of my belongings were packed and stowed away at 3:00 a.m. that morning. I was a bit tired when we left for the airport at 5:00 a.m. The lesson: you never know how much stuff you really have until you go to move it!

Once arriving in New Orleans with ten other students and the amazing Mark Anderson (Chair of the Math Department), we got right to work and made a lot of progress during our first week—more than three houses worth! If you are interested in the process of home-gutting, please check out my earlier R-Journal on our Spring Break trip in March. On Saturday, the group left, leaving me alone in the big city for the evening. I opted to relax and recharge in a hotel downtown (my feelings are that every American should have the right to a shower without shoes at least once a week). Luckily, I had something to do—some friends were still in town taking summer classes at Tulane University. I met them last fall in Winter Park, as Rollins hosted them for the semester due to the closure of Tulane after Katrina. It was a fun, relaxing evening and I was ready for the next group to join me in New Orleans—this time in the form of faculty, staff, recent Rollins grads, and a couple of students.

Our second week was a lot of fun. I’ve always found that it is really interesting to get to know faculty and staff members outside of their classrooms and offices. Because we had a larger group than that of the previous week, we decided to divide in two teams. Collectively, we gutted seven homes during week two! On Saturday, the group headed home. However, I relaxed in the city again for the evening—I was not able to get a direct flight home to Cleveland until Sunday morning. The amazing Aquarium of the Americas had just reopened in New Orleans. Naturally, I had to visit. The facility was amazing—definitely the best aquarium I’ve ever visited. However, the aquarium was not the only impressive element I found that Saturday. I was perhaps more impressed by the people I ran into at the aquarium. Most were local. I really sensed the passion that they had for their city and for its rebuilding. The resolve of the people of New Orleans is strong; a hurricane can destroy a city’s buildings, but it cannot touch its soul.

I’ll end this journal with an op-ed that I submitted to a local newspaper for publishing (we’ll see if it actually happens). Stay well, friends! Thanks for the emails and happy summer! I look forward to seeing many of you this fall.

Mucking piles of toxic sludge, disposing unidentifiable decaying animal carcasses and combating an unforgettable smell emanating from a putrid refrigerator are not among the activities one would anticipate for a first trip to the illustrious city of New Orleans. To be sure, neither Mr. Frommer nor Mr. Fodor lists home gutting as a primary attraction within the greater metropolitan area of the city. However, for the greater portion of the past nine months following Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of volunteers have been introduced to New Orleans through a week or two of this hard—but rewarding—labor.

Much of the influx of volunteers into New Orleans has come in the form of college students. At the end of May, I returned from my third trip to St. Bernard Parish, a region to the east of downtown New Orleans which saw virtually all of its homes submerged in fifteen feet of water in the weeks after Katrina. In conjunction with my fellow students, professors, and staff members at Rollins College, I founded a campus organization last fall to sponsor relief trips to disaster-affected regions of our nation and world, with an initial emphasis on helping those impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Each of the trips, from the first in March to the last couple in May, have been extremely moving. Countless local residents have shared their life stories, hopes, doubts, dreams and thanks with our team members. While I have certainly removed a lot of debris from a lot of homes, the moments shared with homeowners are what I will remember. Whether it is in hearing a story about a brother’s birthday or in finding a favorite movie in a pile of debris, I’ve always found that my own family is not so dissimilar from those we are helping. Conversation after conversation shows a common theme: no family expected to be so heavily affected by the disaster. No one thought that it would happen to them.

With hurricane season already in its early days and destruction still lingering nine months after Katrina, we must take heed of the lessons learned from our neighbors in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast. While we cannot prevent disaster, we can prepare and plan for it. And, if it does strike, we can rest assured knowing that Americans care and are willing to help—just as we’ve helped them.

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