Ms. Ruth led me inside her cramped trailer. She kept it spotless, but had to stack boxes of personal items wherever she could find space. Her church had volunteers who maintained it for her. It was so small and not her home. We sat at the kitchen table and drank some lemonade to cool down.
I asked her about the flood damage and if she lost much. She said there was enough warning to get the critical things out like family photos, some clothes and other personal items; but the furniture, appliances, other clothes and furnishings were ruined. The problem was the storm’s eye had been predicted to hit more to the west into LA and TX, but turned as it neared the coast. So there was not enough time to do much if she was to leave in time.
Many of you have heard and read stories about how fire, floods, etc. generally will not harm Bibles. You may have rolled your eyes like I did as they were told. I don’t do that anymore. Ms. Ruth described how she left her Bible on a table in the living room unintentionally in the rush to leave. On our first day on site she brought it out to show all of us that it was not damaged – at all. There is photo and video evidence in city records and the media of the storm surge and flooding as well as we saw the flood markings on the exterior walls of her home. It would be physically impossible for it to not be exposed to the rush of the flood waters as the windows and doors were destroyed. She said the Bible was still laying on the table with no water damage at all while everything else in the house had floated into piles and was ruined. If you are a skeptic, you can choose to believe she lied, was mistaken, or maybe that the table just happened to be in the right place or floated freely about the house with an untouched Bible on it. Those are options. After our visit, I chose to believe her. I could not detect a sliver of deception or deceit in her body during our discussions. Scripture breathed through the woman. I also know that God does what God does. He does not need me to confirm what He does to make it true.
I asked her about her family and she opened up about each child, her grandchildren, and that her husband had passed away a decade before. She loved him dearly. A son had died as a younger man. She did not elaborate and I did not question. She worked in food service in the area all of her life and was retiring from the local VA Medical Center. She talked about all of the ministries and activities she was involved in at her church, which clearly brought her great joy. I learned she was Missionary Baptist, which so happened to be how my wife was raised. I told her that we occasionally still worshipped at her family’s home church and were married by the pastor there at that time. She expressed how happy she was to hear that, a common thread.
In return she asked me about our lives back in TN.
She knew that many of us on the construction team were UMC members from discussions with team members. I told her they were the most welcoming of all the churches in our community and that our congregation was a bit different than the norm for that denomination. We were mostly evangelicals who tried to follow the instructions of James. I pointed out my contractor friend as an example. Her heart melted as she adored the man. She knew he was God fearing with a servant’s heart from all of their interactions with the rebuild. Since it was his fourth visit in the relief and reconstruction efforts, he had become well known to the local community as he stayed for longer period than most folks.
We discussed her church’s efforts to help everybody during it all. She said they were all about repentance, restoration and redemption with strong pastoral and deacon leadership. I assured her that I completely agreed with that approach. At that point she stood up and asked if we could go outside to the lawn chairs to sit in the shade out of the heat of the trailer. I took it as it was time to get my smelly, sweaty body out of her kitchen. 😂
After getting trash talked by the team for sitting and not working, to which I responded for them to respect their elders 😀; I asked her if the people that remained in the neighborhood were OK, if she was safe and supported. She smiled and said there were no big problems, that they all tried to help each other. She knew about the drug dealing, but said the man was never a problem to anybody who lived there. She assumed he would eventually move on or be arrested. She said she prayed for both he and his customers to change their ways. The problems the neighborhood had were more with city services and the lack of clean up of now vacant, trashy lots that harbored vermin. But she knew the city was stretched thin by all they had to do.
She was not a fan of the casinos other than that people could make a living working there and in surrounding businesses. She did not condone gambling and saw too many lives ruined from it. She said she never condemned people for their choices, just tried to be there to pick them up when they fell and show them a better way. I told her I agreed, that my wife had once been married to a gambler who spent all of their money on it. During those times he would abandon her and their daughter. He expected her to take him back each time, until she didn’t. He gambled and lost, which ended in my gain.
Then she opened up about the real tragedy of the situation there.
For the people who remained and did not abandon their properties, FEMA trailers were everywhere. They had the basic necessities, but were cramped and uncomfortable in the hot, humid Mississippi and Louisiana climates. Most had no AC unless the residents found a way to add a small window type unit. She was thankful to have a place, but uncomfortable much of the time.
Residents who wanted to stay and rebuild like Ms. Ruth had endured endless waffling by FEMA and other government agencies in the process of having their homes restored. Some who wanted to stay grew weary of the delays and cramped quarters such that they sold out. The delays seemed intentional. FEMA and state authorities clearly preferred buying the properties for a pittance, especially when casinos were raking in huge tax revenues and employing large numbers of local residents. So in those areas they had been very slow to respond to the infrastructure needs to rebuild as well as storm damage and trash removal. Some of the properties FEMA purchased at low ball prices were later sold to bidding developers and contractors to build affordable housing for casino workers. Just another scummy example of the government taking advantage of its citizens’ misery. Shocker.
Ms. Ruth wanted none of it. Her home and her church were there, it meant more for her to be there since it was her calling. Imagine being an elderly retired person living on a small social security check and VA pension in a little trailer on your own property for a year after signing documents to receive assistance from the program in the form of a low interest loan to cover costs above the insurance settlement; and yet your home had not had the first repair started. The authorities wanted her to take a small check, sign it over, pack up and leave. At her age of 69-70 years old, she could have easily done so with one of her two living children and families, but refused. She wanted her independence and to answer her calling. Ms. Ruth did the hard thing, she held her ground.
At that point as a contrarian deep in my soul, I could not have been more proud of getting to know her.
Real Equality, Not The Propaganda
To finish our conversation that day I touched on a subject she cracked the door to discuss. She said, “We all want the same thing, love and respect.” I decided then was my time to open the door wider. I wanted her to know that we all saw her for who she was; a beautiful, Christian human being who loved and served others selflessly. I simply made the statement to her that most people are the same at heart. Sometimes we just let the world get in the way of who we are supposed to be. I thanked for how she had received us and the positive influence she was on members of our team. I told her that we were praying for her and the situation for folks there every evening in our devotional times.
She smiled, nodded her head and thanked me. We both knew skin color had nothing to do with who we are and should be a human beings. In that encounter we had grown to trust and extend Christian love to one another as the Lord intended.
I had no idea until many years later when she passed away that Ms. Ruth had been deeply involved in the local region’s civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. We did not talk about politics, racism, etc. at all during that week. Life had moved on since those days and people had become much more accepting of each other.
Ms. Ruth also had to mature past the hurts and troubles of her past experiences just like every single one of us do. Our week with her as a team following a catastrophe in that area put another small stamp of affirmation on her beliefs about people as well. Not only did she witness to us powerfully, we witnessed to her by being of selfless service and affirming her value as a person. The entire neighborhood and city saw it every single day that volunteer relief workers spent time in the city helping those who were in need regardless of their skin colors, religious or not, poor or rich, etc. backgrounds.
The only regret I had was that the state’s relief organization did not see fit to send teams to blitz rebuild and get them done more timely. Had our two teams been assigned to Ms. Ruth’s or any other similar rebuild after the demo and mold treatment had been completed, we could have fully completed the rebuild and requested the final inspection within a couple of weeks. Many of us would have been able to commit to stay a longer period. Having 12-15 men and women doing rebuild work and a contractor assigned to instruct and inspect while scheduling the electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. professionals would have accelerated the process. But government was involved, so it had to be done less efficiently. They turned a 30 day blitz rebuild from start to finish into a 3-4 months process. Of course. 🤪
Parting Ways
The next to last day we completed our assignment plus more at Ms. Ruth’s. We said goodbye and were sent off with hugs and another heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. I’m sure she was prepared to greet the next team coming in the same way she did us, although she said we had been her favorites for how hard we worked and how much we shared our lives with her. We all chose to believe her. 😀 She was beginning to get excited about moving back into her home in a month or so.
The final day of our journey was one of team bonding and touring the coast. We set out on a journey to the west and did not return until evening. It was only about a two hour drive to N’awlins from Ocean Springs since the majority of I-10 had reopened. We would take side trips into other affected areas with the detours. The hotel I stayed in the year before had been repaired and reopened. A full court press of construction had taken place as they worked to get the Superdome and the rest of the French Quarter ready for the Saints’ NFL season. However, the hardest hit flooded residential areas from the infamous levee breaches and pump failures left places like the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard’s Parish still messes and ghost towns.
The tales of human misery had reached legendary status there. One of the easier ways to understand it is documented in one statistic. The Coast Guard officially rescued over 34,000 people from the flood waters in the area alone. Then consider that regional residents with boats rescued greater numbers than that while providing food, water and shelter to their neighbors. It was a wonderful story of people helping people as good ole boys and gals of all skin colors took to their bass, ski and pleasure boats to troll the waters seeking to rescue their neighbors in those terrible conditions. So many had stayed to ride out the storm or did not have transportation to be able to leave. Katrina had been downgraded to Category 3 as it hit on shore, so they thought they could ride it out. Nobody expected the extent of the flooding. That is what caused it all to turn into such a tragedy in N’awlins.
It was from these efforts that the rescuers from the general public later came together in 2016 to form the Louisiana Cajun Navy organization to assist in times such as those. During the period that followed they grew into an org of 300,000 contributors. Their on-going efforts extend into disaster relief from tornadoes and earthquakes as well. They are currently on the job providing help in MS, AR, and west TN from the past couple of weeks of tornadoes. They are extensively trained and coordinated. They work in combination with local emergency operations command centers and provide whatever needs to be done to locate, rescue and assist people.
https://louisianacn.com/Press.aspx
Conclusion
We arrived back in Ocean Springs to enjoy one last meal together before making the long drive home. We made sure that was spent pigging out at the famous, The Shed Barbecue & Blues Joint in Ocean Springs.
Uh, yeah! Awesome way to finish the adventure. I had a sample of nearly everything on the menu as a reward to myself as we all chilled out with some good country blues music from a local band. Which reminds me of their cover of the song below. Remember Goober as a…
I will wrap up with some notes from the Katrina journey along with more adventures leading in the exact opposite direction next time. Until then, be blessed. He is risen!
Beautiful story, thanks!
👍. Be blessed, friend.