Justin Halls '05 never expected his career path
would depend on which way the winds blew. Newly placed with Teach
for America in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, Halls was
transferred to Houston in anticipation of a wave of evacuees.
Then along came Rita, further displacing students and creating
a surplus of teachers. The federally funded Teach for America
organization made a deal with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, and, five months after graduating from Notre Dame, Halls
was managing the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center in Saint Charles
Parish. He and his staff of about 50 helped evacuees apply for
relief benefits. The workers faced complex situations at the center,
he said, as they attempted to "make the system fit the people
and their real-life situations." One satisfied client came back
with a pot of gumbo. As for the disgruntled, Halls would like
to point out the plight of the earthquake victims in Pakistan.
Americans are lucky to have a system in place, imperfect as it
is, he said. "But I can't say preachy things to applicants."
Rev. Joe O'Donnell, CSC, '55 of Phoenix, is
a spiritual care team member for the Red Cross. For three weeks
in September, he helped comfort 1,300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees
-- ranging in age from 2 weeks to 99 years -- who were flown to
Phoenix. "Volunteers grabbed them, hugged them, got their names
and helped them find a place where they could put their heads
down." He was put in a supervisory position for both the Red Cross
and police department "in trying to keep some of the clergy in
line to make sure there was no proselytizing," he said. "When
people are at their most vulnerable time in their life, you don't
come in and tell them you have all the answers."
Amy Maher '88J.D. and her
husband, Roger Smith, were making plans to go into the disaster
area just as the residents were getting out. As regional coordinators
for Noah's Wish, an animal rescue organization, they knew many
residents would have to flee without their pets. Maher helped
with the door-to-door search as Noah's Wish rescued and cared
for approximately 1,900 animals in and around Slidell, Louisiana.
"It was so quiet out there. That was the weirdest thing. But that
makes it easy to find them," said Maher, an assistant state's
attorney in Madison County, Illinois. Every pet was either reunited
with its owner, placed into foster care or adopted. "The people
were so appreciative."
Paul Bonitatibus '71 had his mind on his 3,300
employees and their families in the aftermath of Katrina. President
of consumer and business banking for Hibernia National Bank, the
largest bank in Louisiana, Bonitatibus oversaw relocation of about
98 percent of his employees to temporary headquarters in Baton
Rouge or other bank branches, and the dispersal of emergency grant
money. "I never heard anybody complain," he said. His concern
was also with the displaced customers who showed up at branches
in need of cash, while computers at the bank's central location
in downtown New Orleans were disabled because the building lost
its air-conditioning. The inconvenience could have been remedied
in one day, as bank employees secured back-up tapes, boarded rafts
dropped to them by helicopter and rowed across the street to be
picked up atop the Tulane Medical Center parking garage. But the
helicopter was chased away by sniper fire. "Our people spent the
night on the roof."
John Sweeney '83, a chief of general surgery
at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, volunteered through the
first night as thousands of evacuees arrived at the Houston Astrodome.
He replaced lost medications and heard the stories of hundreds.
Most gratifying, he said, was the opportunity to connect people.
A couple in their 80s who had not talked to their children in
the Pacific Northwest told him: "Our kids probably think we're
dead." Sweeney's co-worker pulled out his cell phone, and a tearful
long-distance reunion ensued. With the scoreboard flashing names
and phone numbers throughout the night and the weary on cots covering
the field, said Sweeney, "the whole thing was quite surreal."
Ron Blitch '76 is also an alumnus of Holy Cross
School in New Orleans, an elementary and high school, that sustained
about $20 million in damage when the Industrial Canal gave way
to the Ninth Ward, destroying about 40,000 homes. Blitch notes
that Father Basil Moreau, CSC, who sent Father Sorin to found
Notre Dame, also sent members of the Holy Cross order to New Orleans
in 1859 to found a school along the Mississippi River; that later
became Holy Cross School. He hopes Notre Dame "rises to the challenge
now to put Holy Cross School under its wing as an important institution
in a very fragile neighborhood." Its students, 70 percent of whom
come from outside New Orleans, routinely assist homeowners, and
the administration was influential in establishing a police substation
in the neighborhood. "It's a real security blanket there." Blitch
is in partnership with Ken Knevel '74 at Blitch/Knevel
Architects, Louisiana's third-largest architectural firm. They
want to influence the development of "trailer cities that are
real livable communities with churches, post offices, stores,
schools and parks, instead of what FEMA typically does -- and
did in Florida after Andrew -- where they just line up thousands
of trailers on white gravel. They're like internment camps." Blitch
hopes the Notre Dame School of Architecture will give students
the opportunity to design such a project. "This is real life."
Paul Christmann '89 was the catalyst for much
of the good alumni were able to accomplish in the weeks following
the Gulf Coast hurricanes; the Internet information center he
set up enabled alumni from all over the world to post information
on displaced friends and family, offer assistance with housing
needs, employment or academic placement, and extend warm wishes.
Christmann, president of the ND Club of New Orleans, evacuated
with his wife, Noel, their children and the club's allotment of
Tennessee football tickets. "It took a month and a half to contact
all the club members who had purchased tickets and get them distributed,"
he said, noting how fortuitous it was that the club trip was for
a game later in the season. Along with campus officials, Christmann
organized the student-alumni service project that took place in
New Orleans during winter break.
Cathy Connors '95MSA, vice president of the
ND Club of Houston, emailed the young alumni who were medical
students at Tulane University in New Orleans when she learned
they were transferring to Baylor University and needed housing.
Connors placed 12 students with Notre Dame families. "They've
opened their doors to them for however long they need to stay,"
which will likely be the entire school year, Connors said. "It
makes me so proud to be from Notre Dame and to see so many people
open their hearts and their homes. The whole alumni membership
here stepped up to the plate in numerous ways." Connors tells
the students who say they wish there were some way to thank the
families: "Don't worry about what you can do now. Just get your
medical degree, and do some good in the world. Pass it on somewhere
else."
Tony Roberts '79 led one of the dozens of alumni
club relief efforts that took place in areas far from the Gulf
Coast. The president of the ND Club of Orange County, California,
set the club's fund-raising mechanisms into high gear and says
donations via the club website were "almost overwhelming." Roberts
maximized the donations by challenging two local Catholic high
schools to raise money to be matched by the club. The schools
raised more than $11,000, which went to the 2nd Harvest Organization
of the Gulf Coast. The club's matching contribution was sent to
the New Orleans club to distribute. Roberts knows that the Notre
Dame network would also help Southern Californians. "But for the
grace of God we're one earthquake away from the same situation."
Matthew Gracianette '87 left the San Francisco
Bay Area in early October with his girlfriend, Kris Putnam, donations
of nearly $7,000 and a van full of supplies -- bound for his hometown
of New Orleans. He also carried a heavy heart; his Uncle Pat died
in the flooding of his home. "It was heartbreaking for all of
us," Gracianette said of his extended family. "He was a powerful
figure for us, such a good-hearted soul." In New Orleans, Gracianette
saw Kevin Jordan, M.D., '81, medical director
at Touro Infirmary, who was an inspiration for Gracianette's career
in medicine. Hospital personnel lauded Jordan as their "organizational
hero" for his leadership in evacuating the hospital and then restoring
medical services, said Gracianette, a pediatrician with Kaiser
Permanente in Novato, California. It wasn't until reaching the
ravaged Mississippi towns of Waveland, Bay Saint Louis and Pearlington
that Gracianette found remaining populations on which to bestow
their goods. "They were ecstatic that we had supplies," Gracianette
said. "These people were poor . . . and then this. It was amazing
how strong they were and how much faith they still had and how
appreciative they were." The goodwill ambassadors were invited
back for better, more hospitable times. "They wished they could
cook us some gumbo."
Bill Carnegie '01MSA loaded up a truck at the
Northern Indiana Food Bank on September 7 and drove to Baton Rouge,
just in time to experience Rita. He assisted with food distribution
for a week. "The need was so incredibly great I felt compelled
to go back," said Carnegie, who was then director of the South
Bend food bank. In Baker, Louisiana, he was assigned for another
week as temporary director of an emergency distribution center.
After supplying a feeding site near Lake Charles that provided
three meals a day to 8,000 people, he toured Louisiana coastal
communities to determine locations for additional sites. Sheltered
by tents and trailers, the people would still congregate where
their churches had stood, Carnegie said. One group prayed at the
statue of Mary that had fallen from its place on the steeple of
Our Lady of Assumption Church near Cameron. Rescued from the rubble,
it had sustained one small crack. Near Greensburg, Carnegie dropped
off breakfast for about 50 evacuees "stuck in a little community
shelter." He had intended to document the scene, he said, but
the people "just looked so despondent, I couldn't bring myself
to take that picture. It didn't seem right. I hope they are in
better places now."
Elizabeth Abeyta-Price '84, president of the
Notre Dame Club of Stuart, Florida, led an empathetic outpouring
from hurricane-weary Floridians who had a sense of what Gulf Coast
victims had gone through. "We just had to do something, and yet
the magnitude was of such a different order." Abeyta-Price organized
efforts that raised more than $12,000 and sent two tracker-trailer
loads of food and supplies to areas south of Mobile, Alabama.
Camping gear was the priority of the first trip to residents who
were still "living on the pads of their houses, waiting for insurance
adjusters to come by." She coordinated with Mobile club members,
who distributed the goods, and with Armellini Express Lines, which
supplied the truck, driver and gasoline. Despite the damage in
Florida caused by hurricanes Gene and Frances in 2004, she said,
"Now the consensus is that we were a little bit inconvenienced
by our hurricanes. It was nothing compared to Katrina."
If you have a story relating to Gulf Coast Hurricane relief,
send it to alumpubs@nd.edu.
(January 2006)
