The following story first appeared in the Winter 2005 Glenmary Challenge.
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Hope Amidst the Tears
Glenmary missions and missioners were some of the first to welcome those fleeing hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now, as some evacuees are beginning new lives in these home mission counties, Glenmary is there to offer continued assistance—and hope.
By Jean Bach

A Helping Hand: Ursuline Sister Larraine Lauter and Glenmary Father Fid Levri attend to a young girl at a shelter in Coteau, La. Father Fid, a registered nurse, was part of a group of medical volunteers from Kentucky who traveled to Louisiana to treat Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The team treated over 500 evacuees in shelters like this one located in a Laotian Temple.

His name is Benny and he used to live in Waveland, Miss. He’s legally blind and has an amputated leg. As far as anyone knows, he doesn’t have any close family. He arrived in Aberdeen, Miss., following Hurricane Katrina, with only the clothes on his back. Waveland is gone and so is Benny’s home. He says there’s no sense in going back.

Her name is Lois. Her husband, Tony, is in his 80s, and was hospitalized in New Orleans with an infection prior to Katrina’s arrival. They suffered a series of traumas as they tried to evacuate to the north. When they finally arrived in Aberdeen, Lois connected with the local Glenmary mission which helped them find housing. Tony then fell and broke his shoulder. Today, after a stay at a local hospital, he is recovering and has received therapy and counseling to overcome the trauma and the stress of being removed from friends, home and familiar surroundings.

Lois is trying to piece together what’s left of their lives. But there’s not much left. Their home and their lives were washed away. Now, this Catholic woman is living in a small house that has been furnished through the generosity of the Glenmary mission community that has taken her and Tony under their wing.

These are just three of the hundreds of evacuees who arrived in Glenmary mission counties in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina and later Hurricane Rita—some of them with similar stories; others with stories much worse.

Most of the evacuees who sought shelter in the weeks after the hurricanes have moved on or returned to their homes—or what’s left of them. Their immediate needs of food, water and clothing were met by the shelters set up typically by local ministerial associations. They have moved on with the hope of reconnecting with friends and family and trying to reconnect with their lives.

But for some, like Benny, Lois and Tony, there’s no one or nothing to reconnect to. They, according to Father Bob Dalton, pastor of Glenmary’s missions in Aberdeen, Houston and Okolona, are the “left-behinds.” And Glenmary missioners continue to work to make sure they are not forgotten.

Glenmary missions in northern and central Mississippi and in Alabama counted their blessings after Hurricane Katrina passed. They were only inconvenienced by downed tree limbs and roof damage.
Missions in Ackerman and Eupora, those closest to the Gulf Coast, were most seriously affected. Choctaw and Webster counties were without electricity and phone service for several days and gas was in short supply.

Feeding and clothing the evacuees wasn’t easy because of the lack of electricity and because no supplies could make it into the areas where roads were blocked by fallen trees and downed power lines.

But, even in the midst of the chaos, members of the Ackerman and Eupora missions were able to collect cleaning items, personal care items and baby items to pack into five-gallon buckets for the small town they adopted, Prentiss, Miss., which took much more of Katrina’s force.

In addition to working with the evacuees, residents of these two Mississippi counties have had to cope with their own losses. Local residents lost their stocks of frozen food from summer gardens because of the power outages. In counties where over 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty level and the unemployment rate is 8.2 and 8.6 respectively, the loss of that food is a huge economic blow.

Choctaw and Webster counties are not the economic exception—all Glenmary counties can repeat the same numbers and many are even higher.

“It’s not easy for these evacuees to live in a small town—and jobs are scarce,” says Kathy O’Brien, pastoral associate at Glenmary’s mission in Waldron, Ark., which helped 80 evacuees from Katrina and Rita.

But nothing about the past few months has been easy for those who have been displaced by the hurricanes or for those trying to meet their needs. Glenmary missioners and mission communities, partnering with local ministerial associations, hit the ground running as they worked to respond to evacuees’ needs.

“This whole experience has given birth to a newly motivated and organized ministers’ fellowship [in Waldron, Ark.] and general community cooperation,” says Father Neil Pezzulo, pastor of the Waldron mission, who headed up relief efforts in his area. Churches worked with the Red Cross and FEMA to help evacuees transition out of the shelters and move on or settle into the community.

Kathy O’Brien says that the local volunteers came from the Church of Christ, the Methodist church, the Catholic church and the Nazarene church. It was “ecumenical Christianity in the flesh,” she says.

Seeing this ecumenical Christianity made her think of the childhood rhyme: “This is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.”

“I thought to myself, ‘the Church just moved out of the buildings and is alive and active through its people. This is mission!’”

The Glenmary mission in Monticello, Ark., helped support over 500 evacuees, with many attending weekend Masses. In all Glenmary areas, evacuees were searching for a Catholic church because New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are such heavily Catholic areas.

So Glenmary missions, which are the only Catholic churches in their small towns and rural counties, played an essential role in helping meet the spiritual needs of the evacuees. As Father Bob says, he heard many confessions in the days after Katrina.

Brother Curt Kedley and Father Joe Dean in Idabel, Okla., helped organize, with the local ministerial association, a response to about 50 evacuees from New Orleans as well as Houston and Beaumont, Texas. Each church took turns providing dinner one night a week for the evacuees. The Glenmary mission provided dinner on its given night by using the funds contributed by donors to Glenmary for hurricane relief.

Donors to Glenmary have been very generous, donating almost $15,000 designated for hurricane relief. That money has been well-spent. But now missioners are asking that funds be donated to the general fund of Glenmary and not designated for hurricane evacuee relief. Missioners are still finding many needs arising in their mission counties that are indirectly linked to the hurricanes for which they can’t in good conscience use money designated solely for evacuee relief.

Amidst the many tears shed through this ordeal, there have been many times where, as Kathy O’Brien says, “the sparks of God’s love were flying.”

Like with Benny. While in the Aberdeen shelter, he was reunited with his best friend from high school that he hadn’t seen in 17 years. The friend has helped Benny, and now they both are settling in Aberdeen.

“God is in charge,” Kathy says. “He has a plan beneath the tears.”

Read more about hurricane relief efforts and reflections by Kathy O'Brien and Father Fid Levri