Rebuilding After Hurricane Katrina
August 28, 2008
Terrance Shaw turned three years old on August 29, 2005. No one could have imagined his birthday would mark the worst disaster ever to strike his hometown. Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans that day. When the levees broke, the city was buried in tons of brackish, filthy water, leaving hundreds of thousands of poor barely hanging onto life.
For Terrance’s family, Katrina marked a months-long journey of homelessness and suffering that cost them everything—their jobs, belongings, meager life savings, and even their health.
Instead of celebrating their toddler’s birthday, the Shaws fled the doomed city just ahead of the storm, joining a crush of evacuees. They found no shelter. For weeks they lived in their car, begging for food, taking showers at truck stops, and scraping quarters together, desperately broke because the city and its banks had shut down. They finally found a single motel room they could share with their 18 family members, including a grandmother, great grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins.
The Shaws ended up in Houston, but couldn’t get the medical help they needed. They returned to New Orleans last year. It hasn’t been easy. They’ve moved twice because of rot and mildew in rentals. Danesha, Terrance’s mom, has been diagnosed with a serious illness. Like so many others, they are struggling to rebuild a life in the only city that ever felt like home.
As Terrance turns six, he is excited about a big event in his life: He is going into first grade.
Terrance is attending a Catholic school run by a caring staff, all of whom have been through the storm, just like their students. The Christ-centered school offers hope and a future to 300 children of low-income families trying to dig out of the ruins of catastrophic Katrina.
One of the few schools to have reopened in the beleaguered city, it is the result of the hard work and heart felt faith of my fellow Edmundite priest, Father Michael Jacques, S.S.E.
Father Michael takes God at His word: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Phil. 4:13)
Just days after Katrina hit and the city was still under water, Father Michael returned to his beloved ministry in the heart of the city. Finding a boat and shovel, he rowed into the sanctuary of his 150-year-old church, where he found six feet of filthy dark putrid-smelling water.
Two blocks from Terrance's school, work still needs to be done, July 2008.
Heartsick at the wreckage, he paddled through the sludgy streets of the destitute inner city neighborhood his parish serves. The silence was eerie. There were no birds. No animals. No traffic. No children's voices.
"That's when it hit me—I knew we were in serious trouble,” he recalled. “Children are the future; we had to get the children back."
With a zeal that resembles the first Edmundite Fathers who came South to serve the African American poor 71 years ago, Father Michael began rebuilding the school and church, person by person, child by child, day by day.
"Every time there was an obstacle, God made a way around it," he said, beginning with the 'found' boat that got him through the floodwaters after the hurricane. With Christ's strength, the Edmundites have been doing the impossible for the poor in rural Alabama and in New Orleans for years, thanks to friends like you.
As we approach the third anniversary of this devastating disaster, I am asking you to join the Missions in helping Edmundite Father Michael give a future to the dear children of New Orleans. With your help, we can provide a refuge from life's storms for 300 children who have been through one of the worst disasters our country has ever seen.
Fr. Michael and his ministry staff, all of whom have "gone through the storm" of Hurricane Katrina, and are helping rebuild the city.
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It will cost $416 to educate one child for the entire school year; for $41 you can pay for a month’s schooling for a child like Terrance, who has been through a monumental tragedy. Education will give him and his classmates the tools they need to overcome the obstacles of poverty and loss.
Father Michael has a vision for the poor of his community that begins with the education of its children, the city's future. Modeling his rock-solid faith, he preaches the prophet Jeremiah: For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, plans for your welfare, plans to give you a future and give you hope. (Jer. 29:11)
Praising God, Our Refuge and Strength,
Rev. Richard Myhalyk, S.S.E.
