Living

<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2007 Retiree puts new skills to good use Linda Bryant Smith When the news of the day is a constant reminder of violence, movie stars over the edge, self-serving politicians, killers on the loose and all that crazy stuff, I hold on to this: There are millions of ordinary Americans whose lives are focused on service to others. And a large number of those are older Americans who've given a new definition to retirement. That's why I love to catch up with folks such as Candice Taylor. After retiring from a career in banking, she focused her energy and talent on organizing volunteers and learning carpentry skills. Most meaningful, perhaps, was a week spent in Slidell, La., last spring with 23 other volunteers from Snohomish County building homes among the ruins left behind by Hurricane Katrina. Slidell, "the Camellia City," had a population of 25,000 before the hurricane. Twenty-five miles from New Orleans, Slidell is on the northeast shore of Lake Pont­chartrain. Marinas, public parks and small business bordered the lakeshore before Katrina. On Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina arrived with hurricane winds that reached 176 mph and a tidal surge on the lake that sent 26 feet of water inland. When the storm ended, and refugees from other devastated areas of the region began to seek someplace to live and work, Slidell's population neared 100,000 new residents. Many who came were homeless. The Habitat for Humanity chapter that was building a few homes each year in Slidell set a new goal: 80 to 100 new homes a year as the recovery effort began. The call for volunteers across the country reached the Everett office of Habitat. That resulted in last April's work trip to a rural Slidell neighborhood, Lacombe. A few weeks ago, Taylor returned to Lacombe with another team of volunteers. The neighborhood where they worked in April is a planned development of 15 Habitat homes in various stages of construction. This trip they found four more houses almost finished, eight more under way. The work was hard and a part of her continued learning experience, Taylor said. Many of the tasks involved electrical systems: wiring, installing outlets and putting in breaker boxes. She was in the thick of it. "Volunteers do pretty much everything … siding, sheet-metal work, trim. We made some real progress." Since accommodations are still limited, Taylor's team stayed in a makeshift bunkhouse set up in a strip mall. The owner cleaned a portion of the storefronts after Katrina, but the mall still lacks retail tenants. The volunteers, who traveled at their own expense, paid $100 a week for rent and one meal a day. "For the first week we had a raccoon living in the ceiling and then he was captured and returned to the wild. Believe me, we hoped all along it was a raccoon, not large rats," she said. Their makeshift quarters were palaces compared to the conditions and suffering many of the people they were there to help have endured. One woman, homeless for two years with her adopted mentally disabled sons, was preparing to move into her new Habitat home when someone broke in and stole her appliances. The following week a pipe broke, flooding the kitchen. Still, Taylor said, the woman's spirit was not broken. She helped with cleanup and repairs and moved in with her two boys. The houses are small, about 800 to 1,000 square feet, with one bathroom and a nice porch and windows opening to allow a breeze to flow through. For a family that's been homeless, living with different relatives, these houses mean they can be together at last. The site supervisor for Habitat lives in a house with other workers. His two children live temporarily with his parents. When Katrina destroyed his home, he lived for a time with nine members of his family in a Biloxi, Miss., hotel room. Working for Habitat and putting in the sweat equity on a home for his family has given him new hope, Taylor said. In the spirit of offering what he could to the volunteers from this community, he and the site crew made a dinner of chicken gizzards and red gravy for their new friends from Snohomish County. These are folks who have experienced enormous losses and yet it has not dampened their spirits, nor their belief in what is possible through their own hard work, Taylor said. They are thankful for all the help they receive. Linda Bryant Smith can be reached at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.

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