Our Mission Group Helping in the Katrina Area

11/11/10

Hello from the Katrina Mission group.  Everyone arrived fine and we are working hard.  Ginger, Terry, Barbara, Patti, and Amy are gutting a house.  The 150 year old house was abandoned  and was given to Project Homecoming, the local group working with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).  It is the first house that is being renovated to be sold to a low income, native New Orleans family for $75,000.  The money will then be used to renovate another house. The group has taken down walls, pulled up floors, poured concrete into supports underneath the house, built new walls and much more. It will be interesting for them, if they come again, to see the house in a later stage or even finished!

Don and Carol are working with a couple from Mt Freedom, two men from Morristown a nd Carol's daughter from Virginia. They are working on their second house.  The first was for Jerry, a 70 year old who looks fifty-five!  Jerry worked right along with them as they finished the trim on his house...painting window frames, soffit, awning, and doors.  It was all outside work in beautiful weather!  Jerry's house had six feet of water and it was three days before a neighbor was able to evacuate him in a boat.

Jerry said, when the neighbor moved in several months before Katrina, he parked the boat and boat trailer in the street in front of his house.  Jerry thought, "Oh, there goes our neighborhood downhill!"  After his rescue following Katrina by that same boat, he said he would never say another negative thing about the boat and it could stay in the street as long as the owner wanted!

The second house this group worked on is a shotgun duplex where the house is a single room wide and five rooms deep requiring one to walk through one room to get to the next.  The owner lives in one side with her thirteen year old daughter and the woman's sister lives in the other side.  Renovations were begun by a contractor who took $35,000 for the job, did some work, and then left the job unfinished..  What was done was not finished properly so PDA is now undoing and redoing properly.  The subflooring was poorly installed and had to be removed only to discover rotten beams underneath.  The group is now replacing the beams, will put down new subflooring and possibly get to lay the wood flooring as well.

    Nancy and Delaney are working with a woman from Mendham and several men and women from Morristown.  They are at Elmore's house where he lives with his wife and grandchildren. They have been working on wallboard, mudding and sanding but hope to begin painting soon.

In addition to our houses, we have all had kitchen duty, preparing a meal or cleaning up afterward, and cleaning duties from cleaning bathrooms and showers to mopping floors.  There are also devotions each evening and some have also planned and led these.  Each night, there is a planned activity...a speaker who told us how New Orleans changed over the years and how these changes led to the catastrophe after Katrina, a New Orleans trivia game in which several of our group won Mardi Gras necklaces for answering questions correctly, a slide presentation on our work sights with someone from each group explaining their project, a Family and Friends Night where the home owners PDA has worked for join the volunteers for a social evening, and a night in New Orleans for dinner and a visit to the French Quarter.

  We will come home totally exhausted but with a great feeling of accomplishment, many new skills (except for Terry and Don who could do anything!), and some new friends.  Some of us will surely want to return with the trip in April or next November.  It is truly an experience you do not forget!

Carol Stickney

Also 11/11/10

Hi Jeff,

I hear you are looking for a few pictures.  Here are a few from my worksite.  I have Barb, Patti, Amy, and Virginia in my group as well as 3 men from Morristown.  We have a different project than the rest of the groups.  We are working on a "Blight" house, which is one abandoned and claimed by the city which in turn gave to Project Homecoming to rehabilitate and sell to a low income family.  The first order of business for them was to paint the outside of the house in accordance with the city so it wasn't such an eyesore.  That was done prior to our arrival.  Our chore has been to basically demo the entire interior, jack up and level the floor, shore up the walls, and eventually frame out the interior.  After 2 days we are still in the demo stages and leveling.  Hopefully by the end of today we will start some framing.  Our project is the most entailed of the groups.  Delaney and Nancy are with another group doing drywall and painting.  Don, Carol, and her daughter are in a third group also doing painting.  I will try to get you more pics as the days progress.

Days are long, work is hard, (this ain't no YG Workcamp) but everyone seems to be enjoying it.

Terry