NORWICH – For the second year, Chenango Memorial’s Linda Lewis-Moors and 11 of her (Newcomb College of ) Tulane University classmates journeyed back to the home of their alma mater, New Orleans, Louisiana, to help rebuild the city, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
For a week just after Thanksgiving, they worked at Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village in the upper ninth ward, where musicians and others are finding new homes and developing their construction skills.
Linda and her friends report that New Orleans’ downtown and the French Quarter are looking good, and with the St. Charles streetcar running again (although the route is still not back to normal), the residential areas of the part of the city closest to downtown look about the same as pre-Katrina. However, there are still many pockets of the city that look as devastated as they did immediately after the flood waters receded.
Linda explained, “Anyone going to New Orleans for a vacation or for a conference would not know that there are still lasting effects of Katrina. The city’s hot spots look like “the city that care forgot,” as in former times. In fact, the city seems cleaner and neater than before, and I was told that there are 16 more restaurants open in New Orleans now than there were pre-Katrina. The heartbreak comes when you go to the areas where we were working. Many blocks are still filled with abandoned houses, some of which have families living in FEMA trailers in the driveways and others with no visible signs of life. They are the neighborhoods where people are still waiting for the government and insurance companies to help them rebuild/repair. There are still volunteer work crews going out every day to gut houses flooded by Katrina, and so there are still piles of family possessions next to curbs in residential neighborhoods.”
Linda reports that Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village in the upper ninth ward where she and her friends worked, is looking great. There are about 50 gaily painted houses either built or in some stage of construction, and people are living in a number of them.”
One family, the Baxters, lives in the first house that Linda and her friends worked on last year. Once the family moved in, the Americorps team leader that the Tulane/Newcomb College grads worked under on the project linked the homeowner, Kewanda Baxter, and Carolyn Cox, who represented the Newcomb women. Linda’s friends wanted to do something significant to welcome this family to their new home and they collected funds from their group for this. They discovered that the family had been saving for a computer when the hurricane hit. Since they lost everything in the hurricane, they didn’t have their savings anymore. The group provided a computer for the family complete with internet service. The next project was testing and subsequent tutoring for Dominique, the athletic, oldest child who needed scholastic enrichment to achieve in school and to stay on the athletic teams she was participating on. The boys needed cleats and shoulder pads to play football, and the fund provided money for them.
Other emergencies were taken care of through the group’s support. The Newcomb women were able to meet the family while they were in New Orleans, and they say this is truly a match made in heaven. Each family member is just lovely. The children are all well mannered and personable, and their mother is a very hard-working woman determined that her children will succeed.
The Newcomb women have become an important support group for this family and they are helping to support their family’s aim to have Dominique be the first family member to graduate from high school.
Linda explains that working with Habitat is a life-changing and skill-building experience. Last year she spent time hanging windows and doing a lot of hammering, building front steps and porches and doing last minute touch ups on houses soon to be occupied. This year, most of her duties included installing soffits and siding. “My hammering is improving,” she reports. This year, instead of two purple thumbs, I had only one.”
She stated emphatically, “I can’t wait to go back again next year!”