Hope After Katrina
By Sarah Horner
It looked like a war zone. Military helicopters loomed in the air. Troops trudged through the streets. Homes were obliterated. Residential streets were disguised as land fills and piled high with mattresses, freezers, road signs and appliances. Billboards that had snapped in two covered the highways. Entire cities had curfews.
“There was no way I could have imagined what it looked like,” said Captain Mike Parker from the Salvation Army in Fergus Falls about coastal Mississippi after he returned from a two-week trip working as a hurricane-relief volunteer there. “I'm still in disbelief.”
Trying to piece back together the lives of people who had lost everything they owned was a daunting task, Parker said. And he recalled he often felt like his minor contribution was inadequate in the face of such total despair.
“I remember telling a particular gentleman that I didn't feel like I was doing much in terms of his loss,” Parker said. “And he told me, ‘It's about hope. You give us one thread of hope, and then someone else does, and eventually we have a cord to hang onto.'”
It was the graciousness of people like that man that Parker said reminded him why his presence, though seemingly insignificant, was necessary.
More: http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/articles/2005/10/24/news/news03.txt
It looked like a war zone. Military helicopters loomed in the air. Troops trudged through the streets. Homes were obliterated. Residential streets were disguised as land fills and piled high with mattresses, freezers, road signs and appliances. Billboards that had snapped in two covered the highways. Entire cities had curfews.
“There was no way I could have imagined what it looked like,” said Captain Mike Parker from the Salvation Army in Fergus Falls about coastal Mississippi after he returned from a two-week trip working as a hurricane-relief volunteer there. “I'm still in disbelief.”
Trying to piece back together the lives of people who had lost everything they owned was a daunting task, Parker said. And he recalled he often felt like his minor contribution was inadequate in the face of such total despair.
“I remember telling a particular gentleman that I didn't feel like I was doing much in terms of his loss,” Parker said. “And he told me, ‘It's about hope. You give us one thread of hope, and then someone else does, and eventually we have a cord to hang onto.'”
It was the graciousness of people like that man that Parker said reminded him why his presence, though seemingly insignificant, was necessary.
More: http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/articles/2005/10/24/news/news03.txt
posted by Kent at 11:09 AM
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