After the Storm

Service trips to Mississippi are life-changing experience for students

The distance between Maryville College and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is approximately 600 miles. But three groups of students who traveled to the area following Hurricane Katrina now know that the distance between comfortable campus living and unfathomable devastation cannot best be measured in mere miles, but instead, years – the years it will take to cleanup and rebuild the area, and the years it will take for the students to process exactly what they experienced and how their lives were changed.

Nearly a dozen students joined the Presbytery of East Tennessee for a mission trip to Biloxi, Miss., over the Christmas break. A few weeks later, 15 students enrolled in the January Term course PLS200: Leadership in Action, led by Director of American Humanics A. Cole Piper ’68, left for several days of volunteering in D’Iberville, Miss. And for the annual Alternative Spring Break, 15 MC students and Center for campus ministry staff members Preston Fields ’03 and Karly Wilkinson ’04 boarded vans headed to Pearlington, Miss., for service organized through the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program.

They could have chosen other places and other ways to spend their “down time” – enjoying family and friends, traveling to vacation spots, working, even studying – but given the choice again, they say they would choose the long hours of manual labor because in doing so, they also would be choosing the opportunity to meet people who had lost everything but hope.

Spending the holidays amidst wreckage

Close to a dozen Maryville College students spent the latter part of their holiday break on a mission trip organized by the Presbytery of East Tennessee.

Organized by senior Craig Lovingood, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Sweetwater, Tenn., the trip had students leaving Dec. 27 and returning Jan. 2. They joined nearly 180 others staying and working in the Bay St. Louis (Miss.) area. The group was transported daily to nearby Biloxi where they provided assistance to locals whose homes were ravaged by the storm.

“Since the hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, I’ve wondered how I could get involved in the rebuilding process,” said Lovingood, who wanted to go on clean-up trips in the fall but couldn’t because of his school and soccer team schedule. “The Presbytery created possibilities for many people to help through service. The December trip was an opportunity to do my part.”

Volunteers removed old roofs, built new ones, and replaced shingles on damaged ones. Those who were uncomfortable working on rooftops had plenty of work to do cleaning debris from the inside of homes.

“I walked with trepidation through the wreckage of someone’s home, carefully trying to avoid the broken china and glass scattered across what was formerly a beautiful beachfront backyard. As I walked toward the destroyed brick house, I saw an amalgamation of stuffed animals, clothes and household appliances littering the lawn,” wrote first-year student Sarah Terpstra in a blog posted on the East Tennessee Presbytery’s web site following the group’s return.

She titled her entry “Steadfast.”

“The side of the house had a spray-painted X, a symbol I had seen previously on many houses and buildings in St. Bernard Parish. The X on each building signifies that it has been searched for bodies, and the number in the X signifies the number of bodies found in each building,” Terpstra’s blog continued. “Seeing this spray-painted X with the number one on the side of what I’m sure used to be a well-loved and beautiful house struck me in a way nothing else had.”

Terpstra said she thinks she may want to join the Peace Corps after she graduates. She admitted the trip was totally new ground for her and that the magnitude of devastation hit her hard.

“These people who had lost everything were still smiling and happy with life, which showed me that community is far more important than material belongings,” she added.

Learning new lessons in leadership

Cole Piper didn’t plan to take his students to the Gulf Coast but after seeing television reports and reading news stories about the devastation of the region, he called a meeting for the people who had signed up for the January Term class. In that meeting, he talked to them about the opportunities for relief work.

“Part of what we do besides leadership is service,” Piper said in explaining the goals of the course. “How do you give back to the community, how do you practice what you’re preaching?”

Students’ response was unanimous: They would go.

“I saw this as an opportunity for our students to be involved in service that was of a national scope,” Piper said in explaining why he chose to take 15 of his students south. The group first spent several days in training at the Red Cross chapter, where they focused on disaster services. Lessons included a wide range of disaster scenarios. “You don’t want to diminish the reality of suffering of someone who’s been affected by, say, an apartment fire, but I don’t think you really get the full impact of devastation [until you see] 200 miles of coastline where every home is destroyed, huge hotels are no longer and giant barges have been blown a quarter-mile inland, smashed in half. Then you realize just how totally massive the destruction was.

With the help of a friend from his church who had already been to post-Katrina Mississippi five times for relief work, Piper planned the trip to D’Iberville, a small community just minutes north of Biloxi.

Arriving in the area at dusk and driving along the coast to see the damage, sophomore Katie Warner, an environmental studies major from Decatur, Ala., described the view from the College’s van as “haunting.” Debris in the trees, downed utility lines and mounds of garbage along the road made the area look more like a third-world country than a tourist destination in the United States, she said.

Housed by a Methodist congregation in the area, the group got up early the next day to begin work on the first of seven houses that they would help make livable again. The student group tackled roofing, insulation and sheetrock installation and interior painting. They moved a lot of furniture. According to Piper, in 12-hour days, the 15 of them accomplished what would have taken the homeowners two weeks to complete.

Ironically, what the students learned in the PLS200: Leadership in Action course was the importance of teamwork. Students found “niches” while working. For example, one student who was a math major measured most of the materials that required cutting. A few who had volunteer experience with Habitat for Humanity handled the power tools or taught others how to use them.

“I think I’m a better leader, but I also think I’m a better follower,” Erin Mentzer, a sophomore political science major from Knoxville, said after reflecting on the trip. “In some situations, I realized that someone else had the better idea or could do the work more efficiently.

“We had some strong personalities among our group, but that didn’t seem to matter. This was more an exercise in teamwork than leadership,” she continued. “We realized that the faster and smarter we worked, the sooner we could move on to another project and the more people we could help.”

And the people of the area appreciated what was being done for them, Piper, Warner and Mentzer emphasized. They encountered no hostility and heard little criticism aimed at government or non-profit entities. What they did witness were people trying to adjust to a “new normal” – residents still going to their neighborhood grocery store, but in the midst of destruction.

“I’ll never forget that,” Piper said, “or the hopelessness that people could have felt, but didn’t. After everything was said and done, a lot of the people we worked with still had a sense of hope.”

Describing the number and various kinds of groups who were in the area to help with the cleanup, Piper said he believes “people helping people” is the only way the Gulf Coast will ever recover. He and the students talked about that – and debated the role of governmental leadership in such a disaster.

They all agreed that effective leadership requires compassion. In addition to wielding hammers, staple guns and saws in residents’ houses, the MC students spent several hours listening to stories about water levels, evacuations and lost pets.

“They wanted to tell us what happened, and that was good for us,” Warner said. “At the end of the day, a lot of us were tired or hungry or dirty, but hearing those stories helped remind us why we were there and why people should be there.”

The MC students learned that ultimately, leadership entails getting a job done.

“Effective leaders are more interested in [getting the job done] than getting the credit,” Piper said, praising the students’ spirit of cooperation. “I’m proud of these guys.”

Unforgettable Pearlington

When she left for Pearlington, Miss., first-year Bonner Scholar RaeKenya Walker was afraid she might spend the entire week crying, unable to work amid the sadness and destruction she’d seen in post-Katrina television reports.

She did shed some tears during the Alternative Spring Break, but they didn’t stop her from seeing that she – and her peers from Maryville College – made a significant and positive impact on numerous people trying to get on with their lives.

An annual event at Maryville College since 1996, Alternative Spring Breaks (or “ASB,” as students better know it) and Alternative Fall Breaks are unique service opportunities for students, faculty and staff. They are intended to provide learning experiences for students while strengthening the communities in which they volunteer. In recent years, ASB trips have taken students to Florida, South Carolina and other Tennessee communities to work with mentally challenged youth, homeless populations, and Habitat for Humanity.

As director of volunteer services at the College, Preston Fields plans ASB trips months in advance and after Katrina hit, it seemed obvious to him where the Maryville College van should be headed come the following March. He pulled students together to gauge their interest in spending one week helping with hurricane cleanup. Like students enrolled in PLS200: Leadership in Action during J-Term, the response was unanimous – they needed to go.

Working through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), Fields learned that the group would be needed in Pearlington, Miss., an economically depressed community located on the Pearl River and between Slidell, La., and Gulf Port, Miss., cities that seemed to be drawing more resources and volunteers. With little evidence of cleanup or rebuilding months after the hurricane, several news organizations dubbed Pearlington “the town FEMA forgot.”

It was a very fitting, though heart-breaking, moniker, Fields, Wilkinson and the other 15 from Maryville College found out as they toured the area after spending their first night in the PDA’s tent village.

“When we got there, it looked like nothing had been done,” Walker said. “They were still picking up stuff off the side of the street.”

According to Fields, in the town of 1,300 homes, approximately 95 percent of residences were unlivable. All church buildings were destroyed, and one elementary school that did survive the wind and water was converted into “PearlMart,” where families could go daily and receive donated water and food.

People who called the small, close-knit delta community “home” were still sleeping in tents in the front of their houses. FEMA trailers were present, but few were plumbed or wired for electricity.

“The fire chief in the town told the story of how Pearlington had two fire trucks before Katrina. They lost one in the hurricane but loaned the other one to the next larger town,” Fields said. “He told the fire chief of the other town, ‘I have nothing to defend now.’”

Coordinated through the PDA office there, MC students assisted with a variety of projects. Some got the camp office organized, which included taking requests and setting up work for the volunteers living in the tent village.

Calling one resident, “Mr. Kent,” to set up the next day’s work, Fields asked him what he needed. “Manpower,” was the reply, and Fields had to smile, realizing that only one other male accompanied him on the trip from the College. He assured Mr. Kent that everyone in his group could get the job done.

The group gathered debris and put it in piles so it could be picked up by the town engineers. Students “mucked” out houses, installed insulation, hung drywall and treated homes for mold. At the end of one work day, one resident whose yard had been cleared by the students commented, “It finally looks like someone cares.”

Seeing that difference wasn’t only rewarding to residents and homeowners, it was motivation for students, said Nikki Baldauf, a first-year Bonner Scholar.

“Pearlington is very much a stereotypical Southern town,” Fields explained. “It’s close-knit, and the families who live there often have lived there for generations. The people we talked to said the community had seen disasters before – home fires and unexpected deaths and things like that, but in those cases, the community rallied around them, supported each other. After Katrina, nobody had anything to give. They were all affected.”

“Affected” doesn’t begin to describe how the trip impacted the MC students and leaders.

Several reported feeling guilty after they returned to the comforts of their residence hall rooms. Taking a hot shower at home, Fields said he felt like he needed to be back in Mississippi. Students are already talking about return trips to Pearlington.

Their bond is evident every Monday, when they wear either their PDA or ASB T-shirts on campus. It’s a way of staying connected with each other and of remembering the challenges still faced by the people of the Gulf Coast.

They believe the area will recover because the residents are committed to that.

Walker, who had prepared herself for a depressing, overwhelming visit in Mississippi, said she was actually inspired by the people they were there to help.

“Two women in the camp told me, ‘When you take one step, God takes two,’” Walker shared.