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A mission to Mississippi

Overland Park parishioners offer help to hurricane victims

By Melodie Woerman

Editor, The Harvest

Mary Lynn Swafford (right) of St. Thomas, Overland Park assists a 91-year-old woman who had evacuated her home on the beach in Bay St. Louis, Miss.  Swafford was one of seven people from St. Thomas who helped with hurricane relief efforts on the Mississippi coast in early November. Photo by Kathy Kline

They had seen it on TV, as Americans and those around the world had — the damage to the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina. But the seven people from St. Thomas, Overland Park who went to Mississippi in November to offer their help said they were unprepared for the extent of devastation and the human misery it caused.

But they also were surprised by the graciousness of the people there and, as one person said, by their “incredible resilience.”

From Nov. 1 to 7, the Overland Park crew worked at Camp Coast Care, a hurricane relief center located on the grounds of Coast Episcopal School in Long Beach, Miss. It is operating under the direction of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi and is part of a joint relief effort by Episcopalians and Lutherans that was set up just months before Hurricane Katrina struck the region.

Using dividers and cots, the camp has turned the school’s gymnasium into a sleeping area for up to 120 volunteers, who spend much of their time working in distribution centers for food, clothing and personal and household items. They also provide a medical clinic staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses.

Linda Bemis, one of the St. Thomas volunteers, said the camp provides such necessities because they are so scarce. “Drugstores are gone, doctors’ offices are gone. What happens if you’ve run out of high blood pressure medicine?” she said. There are virtually no grocery stores or places to buy other items, such as cleaning supplies, Bemis said.

She said about 400 individuals come for food each day, and that number translates into some 1,200 to 1,600 people served. The medical clinic sees up to 200 patients a day.

Kathy Kline, one of the St. Thomas volunteers, said, “I expected to go and help people, and I did. I even expected to hear horrific stories about people who rode out the storm, and I did. But I never expected the 100 percent gratitude I found in the people whose homes and jobs were taken away and whose lives were altered forever.”

Lots to do

The St. Thomas crew joined about 40 other volunteers there in early November. Each night all would gather for Evening Prayer and to receive assignments for the next day, with preference given to staffing the clinic and distribution centers at the camp. Other workers then were sent out to help with clean-up in town.

Kline spent one day handing out clothing. Donations included good used items and many new garments, provided by individuals or manufacturers.

She said she was touched by the women she saw there. “These women needed to have their dignity intact,” she said, “and my job at that hour was to hold it intact for them, as if I were a clerk at Bergdorf’s helping them choose a new suit, rather than a volunteer at a clothing tent in a washed-out town full of needy people looking for handouts.”

The Kansans also spent time cleaning out several houses damaged or destroyed by the storm. Kline spoke of one house they were called on to “muck out,” or gut of all debris. The house was under nine feet of flood water for several days, and according to Kline, “the stench was awful.” The crew salvaged the few items it could before the homeowner sadly decided the structure would have to be demolished.

Members of the St. Thomas team also helped clear debris from the yards of several homes that were still intact, including that of a 90-year-old couple who couldn’t reach their house because of the number of downed trees in the way.

Kline said she was deeply touched by the photographs she found in these yards, now separated from their owners by the rush of wind and water. She said, “I wish there was a warehouse somewhere that would house every found item so people could someday come and search for their ‘things.’ But as the week progressed, I realized that these people were truly happy to be alive, and their things didn’t matter.”

The needs of the devastated region went beyond the usual aid and debris removal. Gary Summers and Steve Rimmer were called on one day to help reset tombstones that had been displaced by flood waters at a cemetery in nearby Pass Christian.

Churches and mailboxes

Some of the St. Thomas crew had the chance to tour the area around the camp and survey additional damage. They visited the sites where Christ Episcopal Church, Bay St. Louis, and St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Long Beach, had been. Each had been completely demolished, leaving only its foundation.

St. Patrick’s congregation, nearly half of whom lost their homes, worships in the gymnasium at Camp Coast Care, pushing aside dining tables and chairs for Sunday worship services.

Bemis said she was astonished at what she saw across the road from the camp — a row of post office boxes stretching some 100 yards long. The city’s post office had been destroyed, and these boxes provided citizens with a way to receive mail — a needed service considering many no longer had homes on which a mailbox could hang. “The whole infrastructure of this beach town is gone” she said.

“You just don’t realize how devastating it is,” Bemis added. “You might have a huge tornado in Kansas, but it doesn’t tear up your whole infrastructure. Jobs are gone that won’t come back, no post office, no grocery store, no drugstore. You can’t imagine it.”

Help from all over

Volunteers have come from all over the country. Jan Summers, one of the St. Thomas members, said she was impressed by the number of young people who were there. She noted some had recently finished college and others had left jobs “to come down and spend weeks and months, because they thought it was the right thing to do,” she said.

Volunteers are provided sleeping space and three meals a day, all cooked by other volunteers. They only need to sign up and then show up, Bemis said.

St. Thomas’ members also brought $2,400 worth of gift cards to Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to be distributed as needed. Several hundred dollars in cash went to purchase items the Camp store needed but didn’t have, such as pillows and towels.

Wonderful people

The volunteers repeatedly remarked on the graciousness of the people of Mississippi they went to help. Kline noted, “They know they were given God’s mercy, and they showered us with love just as Katrina showered them with despair. I didn’t find one person who was filled with pessimism or anger. Sadness, yes. Bewilderment, for sure. Unease, restlessness — the emotions were plenty. Yet they all were happy to see us and thanked us over and over.”

Rimmer said he first encountered the people of the Gulf Coast as a youngster riding in his parents’ Chevy station wagon. He has had subsequent visits but said, “I am never prepared to be charmed and seduced by the landscape and by the warm, funny, elegant and dignified people of the area. In that way nothing has changed.”

Going again

Bemis said she spoke for many when she said she would do it again. “We’ve talked about sending another group,” she said. “I really encourage other people to do this. It will be life changing for them and the people they help.”

Rimmer echoed that feeling as he described his time there. "In the end our hearts were broken but our souls, I believe, were repaired, and every day we came away with a clutch of simple, beautiful humnan poems," he said.