One of our projects this week was the restoration of Fo’s house in northeast New Orleans. Fo was the original owner of her house 20 years ago. Her pride in home and neighborhood was taken from her when she evacuated New Orleans for what she thought would be a weekend in late August 2005. She left with only her family pictures and neighbor’s phone numbers in hand. Fo evacuated to her sister’s house in Houston, along with about 20 other relatives. At one point during the storm, they were talking on the phone to her nephew who had not evacuated, and the phone went dead. His fate was unknown to the family for another week after he was rescued and taken to the Superdome. Flo also had a neighbor in Houston who committed suicide after the hurricane.
The subsequent breaches of the levies, and flooding of so much of New Orleans, devastated the area around Fo’s home. It is still evident on the bricks of the homes in the neighborhood that the water level had been about six feet after the storm. Fo had been a government employee with insurance on her home. She was forced to remain in Houston for three years while she worked to collect on her insurance and find a contractor to rebuild. The contractor that Fo found through a friend ended up taking advantage of her, doing shoddy and unfinished work and eventually leaving town with all the money that Fo had paid her. Fo was left with an uninhabitable home and no resources to rebuild. She moved into a FEMA trailer on her property to protect her home, as many homes were being ripped off during the night while rebuilding. Fo was tenacious in seeking restitution from her contractor and trying to get her home rebuilt. She sought assistance from disaster relief agencies in the area. It wasn’t until she was told by FEMA that her trailer would be picked up on May 1st (thus losing her cooking facilities) that she was offered help by Disaster Relief Ministries sponsored by the United Church of Christ.
This is where we stepped in and went to work. When we arrived on Monday, the home needed a kitchen as the previously installed cabinets were barely attached to the wall, the wiring was completed incorrectly, and there was no stove, oven, or running water. She also had a bathroom downstairs that needed a toilet installed and a door hung. The downstairs bedroom needed ceramic tiles installed, the fence was still blown over and required repair, and the house needed many repairs as well as painting. As they say “many hands make light work” and the group quickly split into projects to accomplish as much as we could in a week.
Getting to know Fo and her family was a real treat for all of us. Her strength and story touched our hearts as did the emotion she conveyed when retelling her own and her family’s experiences of the last nearly four years. Fo expressed real gratitude for the contributions that we have been able to make and considers herself one of the lucky ones. She has known friends and family who have not survived the storm or have not been able to recover from the financial and emotional hardships endured. Her once warm and welcoming neighborhood is now struggling to come back. Several empty houses on the block still wait to be torn down.
On one particularly warm work day, Fo insisted on taking us all out for a snowball (aka snow cone). It has truly been an honor and privilege to work alongside her. We hope to have helped facilitate a return someday to a sense of normalcy. Tomorrow we will help Flo to celebrate her birthday as she is making us lunch and plans to have a cake!
Jerry and Julia Couchman
On Wednesday evening the group headed down into town for latte’s and beignets at Cafe du Monde
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- "Rollin' on the river..."
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- Jerrry and Julia Couchman
Each evening after knocking off work we head back to the Little Farms UCC church to unload tools and load the dumpsters (mandatory), hit the showers (nearly mandatory - for some more than others..), and perhaps grab a Dos Equis (optional). It’s pretty much camping out at the church only with some of the finest Southern hospitality you can imagine. We’ve been joined by Leigh from Maine who is working with us this week while being the advance person for her group which arrives next week. Great conversation and fellowship even if most are dog-tired.
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- Waiting for a shower after a hard days work...
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- Shave ice - it's hot out!
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- Ken bones up on homework for the next day's work.
The 104-year old Beecher Memorial Church, which was flooded to a depth of some six feet.
During our tour we saw Beecher Memorial UCC Church. It is one of two primarily African American UCC churches in New Orleans.
Upper 9th Ward
One of the houses built through Brad Pitt's Making It Right New Orleans Foundation.
On Wednesday we toured some of the scenes of greatest devastation, and learned a lot about the dynamics of the flooding. This is a house in the 9th Ward that is awaiting reconstruction.
Several of us continue working at St. Paul’s UCC. Because of the population loss after Katrina they are down to a large handful of people worshiping on Sundays. The church itself is key to the Disaster Recovery Ministry as it has a large dorm upstairs which this week is housing a contingent of UCC volunteers from Ohio, several of which are PROFESSIONAL CONTRACTORS! They drove 18 hours to get here, pulling their contractor trailers and are doing some really big projects while here. The bathroom floors in the dorms have rotted out over the last couple of years with constant use so we have demolished one down to the joists and are building them back up so they can receive new tiles (hopefully) tomorrow. Click here to see some short video of the demolition.