March 27, 2006 - 8th ward resident Elaine Kidwell has returned from a week in
New Orleans helping a disaster relief team gut the hurricane damaged home of
Jason Hurst, a young quadriplegic graduate student. Friends of his are
petitioning an ABC program to build Jason's family a new house. Please review
the petition from our blog site
here. She sums up her experiences below:
There are really no words to adequately express the experiences of the
last week in New Orleans. The destruction is beyond description--acres
and acres of destroyed homes, businesses, parks, factories; a vista of
blue tarps on most remaining sound buildings; people camping on
parking lots and under viaducts; construction crews doing the same; an
armada of trash trucks rumbling by; logging trucks picking up
appliances........and an army of volunteers bunking down in churches,
sleeping on cots or on the floor, getting up at the crack of dawn to
prepare their own breakfast, setting out for their work-site only to
return in late afternoon weary and covered with filth to stand in line
for one of two cold showers (unless you were lucky enough to be among
the first 10 or so who get hot water.) Then your team helps cook
dinner and collapses only to repeat the routine the next day.
Living among almost 100 Volunteers in Mission people, working under
the United Methodist Church Committee on Relief, I found myself proud
to be United Methodist. UMCOR was the first disaster relief agency to
arrive in New Orleans. At first they committed to be there seven
years but now expect to be in the area devastated by Katerina for 10
years!
My own team appeared to be so pathetic as to be laughable. Only Jesus
himself could have put us together: An engineer skilled in Hasmet
procedures but not group leadership led us; an retired army colonel
with skills he was not certified to use; a retarded epileptic with
steel reinforcing both her spine and one leg; a profoundly ADHD teen
who celebrated his 17th B'Day while in New Orleans; a college student
fighting anorexia; a black teen battered, and kicked out by her mom
and being raised by her grandmother; a housewife; a lesbian couple;
and me--a 69 year old grandma!! Talk about unpromising.
However, as Michelle, the retarded epileptic said, by "the Grace of
God" we did it! In 3-1/2 days of very hard labor we gutted a 10 room
2-1/2 bath one story home down to the studs and concrete sub floor.
It had sat for weeks in 6 feet of water.
The house belongs to Jason Hurst, a 26 year old graduate student who
has been a quadriplegic since being tragically shot just as he
was beginning his freshman year on a football scholarship at Grambling
University. His Mom, who holds two Master's degrees quit her job to
care for him. With a malpractice settlement, he purchased the home
just two blocks from Louisiana southern University and used his
electric wheelchair to get to class. He got a degree in Criminal
Justice and was beginning his masters in community planning with an
emphasis on handicapped issues when Katerina wiped out all they had.
Among other things we hauled out his electric hospital bed and lift,
his motorized wheelchair--and all the family's other belongings.
Our Ragtag Team worked, joked, laughed, danced, wielded sledge hammers
and crowbars, trundled wheelbarrows full of trash and learned to love
each other.
