Dear friends and family,
      The media says what happened to the Gulf Coast during Katrina was equivalent to the explosion of several nuclear bombs. What I saw there during 10 days of relief work was devastation so complete it defies our ready comprehension.
      I was called to realize that the most precious things I possess are my own life and the lives of my family members and friends. Next to these, the most vital possession is my home. It shelters me from the elements, and symbolizes all that I hold dear.
      Of the hundreds of survivors I personally met and assisted, at least a dozen were suffering from having just lost the lives of dear ones. But virtually all of them, plus countless more whose communities I was surveying, had totally lost their homes. Here I mean everything. Clothing, food, furniture, bedding, appliances, boats (many used as fishing vessels for livelihood), automobiles, tools and the houses, kitchens, sheds and barns where these items were kept.
      In Longbeach and Pearlington and Pascagoula Mississippi, I witnesses hundreds of families groping through debris, searching for photographs, precious small antiques, in one case a sodden 100-year-old family Bible, bronze baby shoes…. the tiny unique treasures that contain our deepest hearts.
      Our Charlottesville VA relief column set up a medical clinic at Coast Episcopal School in Longbeach on Sept. 9, and were the first cohesive team of volunteers to staff this shelter. Local residents were still so stunned from the just-receded 30-foot storm surge that they were not even able, as yet, to utilize the relief supplies in our shelter.
      The first 10 blocks north of the beach, across a forty-mile area I worked in, were leveled. All the curbs were clogged with just-sawn trees, and driving down these single lane roads was astonishing. On either side of the road, for blocks and blocks and blocks, we drove through debris piles that were 4 to 9 feet high, massive tumuli of ocean flotsam, building materials, bricks, upturned autos, bikes, clothes, etc., just bulldozer-piled off the road so emergency crews could commence the search for bodies (Over a dozen were recovered during our first 36 hours on site).
      I had the privilege of representing each of you, and dispensing cash relief you had donated. The immediate need was for baby supplies, gas and medicine, to many desolate folks I came in contact with. (An exact account of how your donations were used follows this letter.)
      Try to imagine EVERY item in your home swept outside and away, your yard littered with the precious items, soaked books, tangled clothes and two-by-fours of strangers ten miles away; your ruined vehicle overturned or vanished; your grand piano perched in a tree; all the remaining trees fluttering with rags and clothes, like a bizarre forest of Christmas trees, or an array of huge scarecrows marching to the horizon.
      Try to imagine looking for family members who were washed from your grasp during the floods, and assembling them in your debris-clogged front yard around cooking fires of broken lumber, sleeping in tents or under plywood fragment huts, dealing with constant mosquitoes and heat, and looking back at your home, now nothing but a concrete pad, a single torqued wall, part of a roof gable. Imagine 20 feet of ocean surging for 36 or more hours across your yard, whitecap whipped foam and waves trying to drag you from treetops where you clung to a loved one and held on for dear life.
      Now you can understand how stunned and shell-shocked were the folks our ten-person team was trying to assist. These were people still unable to figure out just what to do next. They sat in ragtag groups under tarps, in bushes for shade, and laughed, cried, smoked, cooked, their faces pictures of puzzlement. National Guard engineers in Pearlington flew in pallets of MRE’s, and dozed roads clear. The Fire Chief escorted us on a 20-block survey of this very poor fishing community of 2200 souls, and we invited them to evacuate on our buses to free apts. being provided in Charlottesville. There were few takers. Such large decisions were as yet impossible to make.
      We off-loaded out relief supplies into the Charles B. Murphy HS gym there, which was being set up as a 200 cot evacuation point, as proof against rains sure to come soon (the Gulf Coast, along with the Pacific northwest, receives the highest annual rainfall in N. America), and shelter for the now-burning heat of late deep south summer. Charlottesville is now in the process of adopting Pearlington as a sister community for giving long-term post-hurricane support.
      After 5 days offering food, clothing and medical service to this hardest-hit epicenter of Katrina, I proceded east to my boyhood home of Pascagoula. Here I resided on the second floor of a mostly destroyed house, and labored 5 days with my cousins, the Gautier-Hague’s. (Doug is a fire-fighter/first responder; Renee a librarian who lost her job, since the sodden, muddied library will remain closed up to a year.) Their 120-year-old Creole cottage on the banks of Yazoo bayou got 4 feet of storm surge, and was washed from its foundation. It probably will be bulldozed. Here too, I surveyed 8 blocks of beachfront destruction, including the waggishly named “Trent’s Lot” (President Bush’s senator friend’s home, totally washed away.) My recently deceased parent’s home of 40 years had taken a surge of nearly 6 feet, and was a hollow shell. There were whitecaps inland for 2 miles, as that surge had receded. People had swum to neighbors’ houses or boated over to rescue them. Again, folks here were still in shock.
      It was a great honor to be able to personally dispense the financial aid donated by our amazing family and friendship circle. It was a further privilege to know that our wonderful family-centered business, Sacred Source, and its far-flung community of customers, also contributed to this direct aid. Even our Calcutta artisans, so often themselves victims of monsoon floods, had sent money to help.
      To all of you who opened your hearts and wallets, I extend thanks. Here is how your funds have so far been used. [Any funds that still come in will be donated directly to a Pearlington Community Relief fund that is just being set up in that totally washed-away Mississippi community, which sits on the Pearl River border with Louisiana, just one mile above the Gulf of Mexico, at Katrina’s epicenter.]