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By Nels Parson
Special to the Rappahannock News
Fund-raising activities of a Rappahannock County coalition of churches to aid survivors of this year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes have produced more than $5,500, which is now being used to help families in desperate need.
Two family groups along the Mississippi Gulf Coast will be the first recipients of financial assistance from the local coalition. The needy families were identified by Rappahannock County volunteers who traveled to the hurricanestricken region to offer help. The steering committee of the coalition, made up of representatives of the churches, last week approved the first relief payments.
The first family to be aided is headed by a mother named Laurie, with two young children, whose home in Bay St. Louis, MS, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on August 29. After the storm passed, her husband worked his way back to the home site and began to clear heavily damaged trees from the land. Working alone with his chain saw, he was killed by a falling tree.
After he had not called his wife for two days, she went to the home site and found him dead. When Jim Gannon of Castleton met her on a visit to the area, she was trying to arrange for her husband’s funeral and burial. Tragically, this woman had lost her home, her job and her husband and has no way to support her children.
The other recipients of local aid belong to a hardworking extended family in Moss Point, MS. They also also lost their homes and possessions. Marilyn, the mother, is a long-time employee of the local school board. She and her husband Clarence, who is employed in a shipyard, have been able to rent a small apartment but their jobs have been interrupted.
One 23-year-old daughter, a single parent with two young children, works at a
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