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the ugly stuff.”
Once we gassed up at WalMart, we moved on to Beach Rd., our most direct route to Christ Church. The road was cleared, and the power lines had been, moved—progress. Yet all along the beach for mile after mile, from Waveland Beach to Bay St. Louis, all we saw inland was debris piles, devastated pine forests, concrete foundations where houses had once stood, a scattering of rebuilding efforts, FEMA trailers, and thick-trunked live oaks.
“It’s just unbelievable, the destruction,” Harold was to tell his wife in a phone call later that night.
After taking Judy to check in with the director of the clinic and meeting with Rev. Elizabeth Wheatley, Christ Church’s priestin-charge, about work orders the next day for the rest of us, we settled into our quarters—a FEMA trailer near Waveland Beach assigned to Navy pilot and Christ Church member Kimberly King and her husband, David, to replace their once tidy bungalow and gardens. Two American flags waved in desolate tatters in the breeze.
Hands-on helping
Over the next few days, Judy tended to patients and administered shots at the clinic for 8 hours a day (before flying home unexpectedly for an emergency appendectomy) while Harold, Sharon, and I hung new front and interior doors and sanded plaster patches on dry wall for a winddamaged home in Gulfport, then teamed up with other Lutheran and Episcopal volunteers from Camp Coast Care to insulate Christ Church’s metal Quonset hut against the intense Southern sun. Wrestling the heavy 8 ft. tall fiberglass rolls and pinning them onto the sides and ceiling of the hut took a total of about 30 volunteers from several states near and far a total of three days. The result was eerily heavenly, though, as the white plastic shrouded pieces ended up looking like plump billowing clouds once pinned firmly in place —comforting, if slightly surreal.
After four days of solid work, we all felt our efforts were merely a drop in the bucket. But everyone we met was more than grateful .. .and more than ready to talk about their experiences during and after the storm.
Survivor stories
Butch Jones, whose home we
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