Get Out and Give Back
By Jane Hess
Katrina. Until August 29, 2005, that word would evoke a picture of a pretty, five-year-old girl with blond hair in pigtails and wearing a pink tutu. Now, for perhaps decades, the sound of that lovely girl’s name will recall memories of one of the worst natural disasters in North American history, and a one-word abstract of the best and worst of humankind.
The sociology lessons along economic, class and racial lines will prove the foundation for dissertations, course outlines and discussions for years to come. Points of departure are already being drawn among ethnicities, political parties and other fault lines.
As with the tsunami in South Asia this past December, destruction of this magnitude also gives us a chance to unite, however briefly, and to recognize the everyday heroes among us. Thank (insert your deity) for our public servants – the EMTS, policemen, firemen, to name just a few – along the Mississippi Delta who knew their families and lives were being literally washed away as they fought to save the helpless. And then there’s the dedicated, underpaid service sector – the minimum wage nursing home aides who hung with their nonagenarian charges, the average Joe who shared his dwindling supplies of gasoline and water to his best friends and complete strangers.
And the giving back extends outside the Mississippi Delta. Good Samaritan stories abound on the internet and blogs –Duke University students who drove to New Orleans to help out and dozens of others. There’s hardly a website now that doesn’t have a link to a donation for the Hurricane Katrina survivors (note … be sure these are legitimate before you enter your credit card number and hit “send”). Celebrities, tycoons, churches, non-profits and your neighbors and co-workers, the guy next to you on the metro – everyone wants to help out. There was strange comfort in discovering that volunteers wanting to help the displaced survivors temporarily lodged in the DC Armory had to be put in a waiting list, or hearing that the Armory had an overabundance of donated supplies. The number of families housed in the Armory continues to decline … thanks in large part to the everyday citizens of Greater Washington who’ve opened their homes to displaced friends, relatives and total strangers.
The Katrina survivors – and casualties – are on everyone’s mind. I ask that you continue to remember them as the months go by. As the headlines make room for other events and the days continue to slip by, many of us will quite naturally become more detached from Hurricane Katrina and her wreckage – the undignified deaths, lost jobs, destroyed homes, the hundreds of thousands of kids whose education has been put on indefinite hold. Undoubtedly very few will be resettled and thriving before the holidays, and the commercial blitz of turkeys and Santa will be a fresh reminder of what they’ve lost … and the fact that they’ve survived.
Get out and give back.
Jane Hess is a free-lance writer and life coach. You can send your comments to getoutandgiveback@hotmail.com
