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Feedback: ‘Helping Hands’ Part 3
May 15, 2008
Because of people like Dick Paradis, a volunteer from Ogdensburg, New York, Ken and Nita Trawick’s house in Gulfport, Mississippi, looks a lot like it did before Hurricane Katrina.
In the wake of the hurricane, the home was flooded with water five feet high.
“We spent two weeks just scrubbing the dirt out of here,” said Ken Trawick.
He was one of the the lucky ones when you compare his plight to that of his neighbors.
“Every house from our house to the beach was destroyed,” he said.
But the home Ken and Nita lived in for 25 years was still standing.
They say that was the first blessing.
A few months later they met Paradis and his team of volunteers from the First Presbyterian Church of Ogdensburg.
That was the second blessing.
“And they would do what they had time to do and do what they had skills to do,” said Trawick.
The Ogdensburg volunteers are still going strong.
On their fifth trip to Mississippi since the storm hit, they’re building new houses.
“No matter what, who you are, what skill you have, you can help people,” said Ogdensburg volunteer Martha Shaver
The group has been working on some of the 22 nearly identical homes that have been given to families in need since October.
The pre-fabricated houses were built by the Pennsylvania Amish and sent down to Mississippi.
Putting the parts together is up to the volunteers from Ogdensburg along with about 3,000 other volunteers working with the same charitable organization, the Presbytery of Mississippi.
“It’s just as important to put the walls up as it is to hang the drapes so every body’s part to me matters equally,” said Russ Ellolderman of the Presbytery of Mississippi.
This week the volunteers are putting the finishing touches on a new house for Katherine Puryear, who hasn’t had a place of her own since the hurricane destroyed her home.
“It’s nice to be home. I missed all my friends since I was gone away and now I’m back,” said Puryear.
But the neighbors aren’t home yet.
It’s just another sign that there will be plenty left to do when the Ogdensburg group makes its sixth trip to Mississippi in October.
See Part 3:
Share your thoughts. Use the form below to send your comment to Diane Rutherford for the Your Turn segment on 7 News. You must include your name, e-mail address and phone number for your comment to be considered. Your personal information will not be posted to the website - this form sends an e-mail. Your comment can be kept anonymous if you so request.
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Feedback: ‘Helping Hands’ Part 2
May 14, 2008
Debbie Moody has plenty of her own home repair to do, but she’s staying busy in someone else’s yard.
The north country woman is spending the week rebuilding other people’s homes in Gulfport, Mississippi.
It’s ironic since she’s got a lot of work to do in Tupper Lake, where her house burned down this past winter.
“They say pay it forward. I think i’m paying it forward,” said Moody.
Moody and a dozen other volunteers from Ogdensburg’s First Presbyterian Church are doing anything they can to help as thousands of people, still living in FEMA trailers, prepare to lose their homes all over again.
The trailers were never meant to be permanent solutions.
They’re made with high levels of chemicals that are dangerous for your health.
Now FEMA says if you’re still living in one nearly three years after Katrina hit, it’s time to get out.
The deadline is June 1 and that has volunteers from around the country working around the clock to get more people into new homes fast.
“It started with a church and a church and a church first looking out for their church family members. And then, well, what about my next door neighbor and so on,” said Martha-Lee Bohn, outreach coordinator of the Presbytery of Missippi.
It spread 1,500 miles away to the First Presbyterian Church in Ogdensburg.
Now that all of the financial assistance from the Red Cross and Salvation Army is expected to be spent by October, help from volunteers is critical.
“The American people take care of their own,” said Lynn Lanier, who lost his home during Hurricane Katrina.
While work to restore the region comes along slowly, lending a helping hand has become an endless mission for the group from Ogdensburg.
“The people in Tupper Lake have been so good to me in my time of need. I want to do something to help other people,” said Moody.
In Part 3 of Alex’s special series, she’ll visit the families the church group has helped and show you just how much a dozen people really can do.
See Part 2:
Share your thoughts. Use the form below to send your comment to Diane Rutherford for the Your Turn segment on 7 News. You must include your name, e-mail address and phone number for your comment to be considered. Your personal information will not be posted to the website - this form sends an e-mail. Your comment can be kept anonymous if you so request.
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Feedback: ‘Helping Hands’ Part 1
May 13, 2008
Teressa Vardano lives in a camper on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
Her five grandchildren frequently visit her in her camper, which was meant to be a temporary setup after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home.
Repairing her old home was too much for one person and she spent nearly two years looking for help.
But, Teressa says her luck started to change about a year ago.
That’s when she met a church group from Ogdensburg, New York, volunteering to help Katrina victims in Gulfport, Mississippi.
“I can’t explain it. It is very overwhelming,” said Teressa.
The latest visit last week marked the third trip members of Ogdensburg’s First Presbyterian Church have made in a year to see Teressa Vardano.
It’s the fifth trip the group has made to Mississippi.
“These people deserve to have this house finished,” said Nancy Skiff, one of the Ogdensburg volunteers.
With the help of new friends from a place Teressa had never even heard of, the job is getting done.
“My job is to make a tiny dent in helping these people regain a normal lifestyle,” said Dorothy Sharlow, an Ogdensburg volunteer.
Because of another week of work from the volunteers, Teressa is getting ready to move into her home.
For more information on the volunteer’s organization, go to www.pcusa.org/pda.
See Part 1 of Alexandra Field’s report:
Share your thoughts. Use the form below to send your comment to Diane Rutherford for the Your Turn segment on 7News. You must include your name, e-mail address and phone number for your comment to be considered. Your personal information will not be posted to the website - this form sends an e-mail. Your comment can be kept anonymous if you so request.
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Reporter’s Blog Part III: “We do things differently”
May 10, 2008
It takes 3,000 volunteers from seventeen states about seven months to help put twenty two families in new homes.
That’s the formula for success here in Gulfport, MS, put together by the Presbytery of Mississippi.
“We do things differently around here,” says Lynn Lanier, one of the construction coordinators.
Lanier lost his house to Hurricane Katrina.
Volunteers built him a new one.
Now he works full time building homes for other families.
A native of Gulfport, Lanier says he saw the place destroyed by the storm and he’s watching it come back too.
He estimates that ninety percent of what has been rebuilt in Gulfport was the work of volunteers.
And while official estimates suggest it will take thirty three years to rebuild the Gulf Coast, Lanier says not on his watch.
The volunteers keep coming, and coming back.
Lanier leads about a hundred and fifty of them through construction work every week, including the thirteen of us this week.
And he says as long as that keeps up, he can keep cutting that “official estimate” down.
Reporter’s Blog Part II: The Lay Of The Land
May 8, 2008
Taking it all in: The flattened house heaps, mounds of debris, and broken window panes.
“Overwhelming” to the eye.
That’s how everyone puts it, even the ones who have seen it before.
Another word for it? Frustrating.
That’s if you’re here to help.
Our plan is to divide and conquer.
With thirteen of us on the job we’ve got our sights set on fixing up four homes.
The question of where to start is hard to answer.
By the end of the day it’s hard to tell if we’ve even scratched a surface.
So patience will be the name of the game, and we’ll have to learn it from the people who live here.
Teressa Vardano’s house was torn apart by a tree almost three years ago.
She’s still working on her new house.
This week, we’ll do what we can to help her move it along.
Small steps today, like digging a ditch for a water line. Just a dent in the work, but one she might be able to appreciate before we can.
Part I of Alex’s Road to Mississippi
Click the blue markers on the map below to see where in Mississippi the church group is working:
Reporter’s Blog Part I: The Road To Mississippi
May 7, 2008
First Impressions: Volunteers say so much has changed. They also say not a lot has changed, along the Gulf Coast, since Hurricane Katrina hit. They see it both ways.
There is one house covered partly by a blue tarp along the road from New Orleans into Gulfport, Mississippi.
It’s buried back behind several rows of houses so you probably won’t see it unless you’re looking for it.
Then it sticks out.
There are thirteen of us making the trip this time; four have made it several times before.
They’re the ones who have turned the rest of us onto “tarp lookout.”
Our “old hands” tell us the hour long ride along Rt. 10 into Gulfport once looked more like a bridge over water, thousands of blue tarps covering everthing on either side of the road.
The look has changed.
Over the last three years they’ve seen less and less blue between the annual fall trip and the annual spring trip.
Today, one blue tarp.
That’s a good sign.
It means some roof tops have finally been repaired.
It’s also a bad sign.
No tarps for houses that have fallen too far into disrepair.
No tarps for houses that are being torn down.
No tarps for homeowners who have given up.
It’s night by the time we reach Gulfport and too dark to survey the damage.
We haven’t seen what it looks like here at the end of the road, but we know there are four houses still hoping, and waiting, for help.
Read the original preview report on Alex’s trip here.
View a gallery of a previous trip to Gulfport, Mississippi by the Ogdensburg First Presbyterian Church :
Helping Hands: 7 News To Join Church Group For Trip To Mississippi
May 5, 2008
How far would you go for a good deed?
Some people from St. Lawrence County can tell you exactly how far they’d go: 1,500 miles.
At Ogdensburg’s First Presbyterian Church, members of the congregation take the term “good neighbor” literally.
Nearly 40 people from the church have been flying and driving to and from the gulf coast of Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
The idea to help their Mississippi neighbors started at choir practice.
They decided it was their mission to help rebuild some 50,000 homes.
“It was like an atomic bomb had gone off. There were very few houses still standing,” said Richard Paradis.
Some of the church members returned for a second, third and fourth time.
In that time, they’ve seen some changes.
On their first trip there were 50,000 families living in FEMA trailers.
There are still 10,000 left.
“We can’t give them back what they’ve lost, but we can help them to know that they’ve made some new friends,” said Pat Paradis.
Since the group started making the trips, it has grown to include people from all over the north country.
A dozen volunteers will leave for Mississippi on Tuesday.
7 News Reporter Alexandra Field is going with them and will write about her experiences daily on her blog on this web site.
See Alex’s report:
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