For As Long As There Is A Need, Local Volunteers Will Keep Their Focus On The Gulf Coast

By Shannon Hicks

It has been eight weeks since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area in Haiti, yet the recovery efforts have begun to fall away from the headlines. The people in Haiti have a long road of recovery ahead of them.

Imagine how the people of the Gulf Coast feel as they approach the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of people in Louisiana and Mississippi continue to try to put their lives back together, getting more and more entangled in red tape and red ink.

For some residents of Newtown, however, trips to Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., continue to be at least an annual trek. Members of Trinity Episcopal Church have been going since shortly after the hurricane of August 2005, as have members of Newtown Congregational Church.

A group of approximately two dozen NCC members spent a week in Biloxi this past January, and earlier this month four members of the church returned to the southern Mississippi city of approximately 45,600 residents for another week of hard work. Jerry Cole and his son Matt and Larry Whippie and daughter Renee all left Newtown the weekend of February 27. The two teams returned home by the end of the weekend of March 7, with the Coles traveling by way of Atlanta (where they visited Jerry’s father), and the Whippies going by way of Chapel Hill, N.C., where Whippie daughter Tanya now lives.

The two-person teams each drove to and from Mississippi because it allowed them to bring some of their own tools with them, and also saved some money.

It was the second trip to Biloxi for Renee, and the fifth for the men. NCC has been working with Biloxi-based Back Bay Mission since 2005, providing donations of money, items, and labor since shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck. Jerry, Matt, and Larry have flown to Biloxi for weeklong stretches for the past three Januarys. Along with fellow members of NCC, the men have done roofing, sheetrocking, painting, insulating, rough and finish carpentry, decking, tile work, and even basic yard work and cleanup.

Renee Whippie joined Jerry, Matt, and her father Larry for a drive to Biloxi in February 2009, when the four participated in The Biloxi Blitz. They, along with volunteers from across the country, spent their week volunteering for Back Bay Mission to complete as many home repair and restoration projects as possible for the low- to moderate-income families serviced by the organization.

Back Bay relies on grants from the City of Biloxi and the city to its immediate west, the City of Gulfport; Biloxi and Gulfport serve as the county seats of Harrison County, Miss. The mission also relies on financial donations from individuals, volunteers, and churches, but in the middle of a recession, those donations have been slipping.

The Coles and Whippies returned to Biloxi for the same reason this year, but found that funding is even tighter now than a year ago. As Biloxi’s and the rest of the Gulf Coast’s woes from Hurricane Katrina move further into history books, recovery projects are falling lower on the list of government priorities, and funding continues to drop.

“The funding down there is a huge problem,” Jerry said last weekend.

“They’re running in the red, by a lot,” agreed Renee.

“They’re bleeding red ink,” Matt said.

Nevertheless, while they were in Biloxi earlier this month, the Coles and the Whippies did a lot of work that brought homeowners closer to what they remember their homes once being.

There is also down time each evening, where volunteers spend their dinner hours together in the dorm Back Bay Mission was able to open earlier this year. Biloxi is home to ten casinos, which offer the usual draws, as well as restaurants with local fare and a shopping mall. But the focus of a stay with Back Bay, of course, is the physical labor during each day.

On Monday, the group met Bruce Williams, who was struggling to get a new roof on his house. The previous roof, which was made of tin metal over wood shingles, was more than 100 years old and Mr Williams could not get insurance on his home until that roof was replaced.

A volunteer crew had spent the previous week stripping down the roof, handling “easily 80 percent of the work on that house,” Jerry estimated. Then the Newtown crew spent three days working on the home’s very steep pitched roof, finishing the stripping and then laying down new roofing shingles. Wednesday also included some “major cleanup work,” said Jerry.

On Thursday, the group moved to another house, this one owned by a lady known just as “Miss B.V.” She had retired late last year from Back Bay Mission (there is a small paid staff at the mission) after working there for 29 years, and also needed some minor roof work.

Another home was worked on for the remainder of Thursday and Friday, whose roof “was a real mess,” said Jerry.

The volunteers who give their time to Back Bay are giving up their own vacation time, and spend a major part of their weeks in Mississippi working outdoors under the very warm Southern sun on the homes of strangers. Why do all this? The answer is simple.

“There’s still a need,” said Jerry Cole.

“Now when you drive around you see more people living in houses that used to be boarded up,” added his son Matt. “Windows have been installed where windows should be, and doors are in place of where boards used to be. I think that’s a good, encouraging thing.”

While the homes that have been rebuilt are again hosting families, there are still dozens of empty building lots where homes once stood.

“You still see empty lots that will never be built back up,” said Larry Whippie. “It’ll never return.”

Meanwhile, dozens of families are counting on the kindness and talent of strangers who are willing to continue to give their time to help rebuild homes.

“We have the skills, and it’s fun. We’ve had a great time, we’ve met all kinds of great people,” said Matt.

Workcampers Are Next

This July, an ecumenical group of workcampers will be heading to Biloxi. Among their chaperones will be at least two people who are very familiar with the city where the high school students will be volunteering: Matt and Jerry Cole.

Thirty-one NEWS (Newtown Ecumenical Workcamp Students) youth from NCC, Newtown United Methodist Church, and St Rose of Lima, along with nine adult chaperones, will travel to Biloxi to spend the week of July 3–11 at Back Bay Mission. The group will spend their time — like the adults who have gone before them — performing much-needed home repairs and rebuilding for people who are still recovering from Katrina.

As Matt Cole told some of the youth in his home church last weekend, they will not only be giving their time and talents, they will also learn how very blessed their own lives are.

Matt was invited to offer the sermon to his church after he returned from Biloxi in January, and he was the guest speaker last weekend for NCC’s middle and high school classes, when he again spoke about his time in the south.

“The truth of the matter is, I don’t see what I’m doing as helping,” he said. “I love working with my hands. I love working outside. So helping put a roof on, or paint a house, or sheetrock some walls is nothing special to me. Yes, I have more skills than a lot of people, but that goes back to me being lucky enough to have someone like my dad as my dad.

“What is special, however, is learning from the people of Biloxi,” he continued. “They’ve lived through things I can’t possibly imagine, and yet, they still have hope, faith, and love for each other. They have a lot to teach us ignorant folks.”

On Saturday, March 27, NEWS will host its 2010 Workcamp Breakfast. This year’s event will be at Newtown Congregational Church, in the building’s Great Room (gathering/social hall), at 14 West Street.

All are welcome. Admission is by donation, and the workcampers will be working as servers that morning. Because table sponsorships have already been arranged (which will primarily cover the cost of food for the biggest NEWS fundraiser of the year), diners are encouraged to tip their servers. It is these donations that are put into the Workcamp Fund. All money raised is used toward the cost of the trip, covering transportation, meals (the group will be preparing most of its own meals at the Back Bay Mission dorm), and chaperone tuition.

In addition to breakfast, there is also traditionally live entertainment and raffles at the workcamp breakfasts.

Additional information and reservations are available by contacting Terry Ferris at 203-426-1406.

Donations Welcome

For those who would like to help the workcampers but cannot attend the breakfast next weekend, information about making donat ions is also available by contacting any of the sponsoring churches or Mrs Ferris.

“We’ve helped 15 or so families with their homes, but that isn’t the limit of people we’ve helped,” Matt Cole said this week. “Every person we meet when at some place like Loaves & Fishes is someone else we’ve touched. When they notice we talk ‘funny’ or what have you, and find out that we’re volunteers from Connecticut, or Michigan, or Colorado, they realize that they haven’t been forgotten by people.

“And sometimes it’s an appreciative Thank You they give, maybe it’s a kind look, or maybe it’s nothing directed toward us at all, but you can still see that they get a little bit of brightness to their face, or a bounce in their step, and that’s one of the reasons why we do it,” he continued. “Because even though they’re complete strangers, they’re also our fellow human beings, and it’s our duty as Christians to help them in any way we can.”