The Battle for New Orleans
Ohio State students spend holiday break helping Katrina victims
Picking truckloads of oranges and lemons for an orchard owner struggling to find workers. Clearing tree limbs, animal carcasses and other debris from city parks. Rebuilding a fence that was ripped down by high winds.
You name a job, Ohio State students who spent the first week of winter break in New Orleans probably did it.
Four months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, small business owners are desperately trying to get back on their feet—and 28 Ohio State students were ready to lend a hand, doing everything from cleaning water-damaged houses to consoling farmers.
"I've never seen so many people work so hard from the beginning of the day to the end of the day," said Matt McVey, the student who organized the group. "It says a lot for Ohio State."
The devastation the city has endured was obvious to the students, who saw plenty of houses that had floated right off their lots.
"It hits you when you're going through an entire community: 60 blocks of houses, and it's just gone," said student Amanda Hardesty.
The students got plenty of thanks: One farmer marveled that “You Yankee girls will work," and others teared up as they thanked the group. Some offered “invitations to stay at their houses—when they have houses—for Mardi Gras,” McVey said.
Matt Strasser was one of about 90 Ohio State students who helped rebuild houses in nearby Slidell, Louisiana, earlier in 2005. He said it wasn't hard to decide to "do something great" a second time.
"Once you've been there, you get this giant passion to go back," Strasser said.
McVey and Denny Hall, the faculty member who helped organize the trip, felt the same way. McVey said he'd gladly help any Ohio State student figure out how to get to New Orleans. (He can be reached at mcvey.19@osu.edu.)
Hall, special assistant to the dean of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, plans to help Louisiana State University's extension office set up a system to hook up volunteers and New Orleaneans in need.
"Now is a time when they can be really constructive," Hall said. "I think that can be a real lasting legacy."
Related links:
Read Louisiana State University's story about the group
See other Katrina relief efforts at Ohio State
(Words: University Marketing Communications. Images: Ohio State student volunteers.)
