A special calling to help the needy

Caked with muck and dripping sweat on a 98-degree morning this month, Marcus Magy wheeled a barrow full of moldy wallboard to a curbside pile. He had a long, dirty day ahead.

"This is my summer vacation," he said with good cheer.

It was also a family vacation for Magy, a 23-year-old engineer from Minneapolis. His parents, David and Susie Magy of Plymouth, were on their second trip to repair houses hammered by Hurricane Katrina.

His sister, Michelle, joined them inside a battered bungalow that looked just the way the storm and flood left it a year ago.

"My God, this is our own country, and a year later it is still like a war zone," David Magy said.

The Magys were from Nechama, a Jewish disaster-response group in Minnesota that has sent more than 300 volunteers to the Gulf Coast this year. They are part of a charitable army from Minnesota and across the country that keeps coming to help the tens of thousands of people whose lives remain shattered by the most devastating natural disaster in American history.

Every day, on streets where hope is hard to find, volunteer and faith groups are shouldering much of the burden of the region's recovery.

They are joining forces to help rebuild entire communities. They are starting service projects that will last for years. And they are playing such an extraordinary role because local governments are too beleaguered to meet the immense needs of residents and because some forms of federal aid have yet to arrive.

A year after Katrina hit, large swaths of the region remain wrecked and ghostly. More than 350,000 residents are still scattered nationwide. There are critical shortages of basic services such as doctors. Authorities have found more bodies this summer in the debris of 135,000 ruined homes.

The federal government has allocated $109 billion in aid to five Gulf Coast states hit by hurricanes last fall, but in many places, rebuilding has barely begun.

If churches hadn't helped, "our community would be at least six months behind where it is today," said Joseph Difatta Jr., a councilman in St. Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb largely leveled by Katrina.

"About 50 percent of our people are senior citizens -- no way they could muck out their homes," Difatta said. "A church will send 15, 20 people to each home, and suddenly it gets done. People are so grateful not just for the help, but for human beings who are so kind and encouraging."

Providing money and muscle

With a staggering load of work remaining, volunteers keep heading south.

This month, Orion Associates, a Minnesota social services company, sent its fifth team of roofers, electricians and other workers to New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward. With labor and supplies from hardware stores, technical schools and lumber yards in Minnesota, the teams have practically adopted elderly homeowners, with plans to see their houses from cleanup to final painting. The next work crew plans to make the trek in November.

"We all pay our own way down there, so that every dollar anyone donates goes into these houses," said Jeff Greischar, 51, a general contractor from Fairmount who has gone three times, took his whole family in June, then came home to twist arms for more supplies.

In another concerted effort, Minnesota's United Methodist churches plan to carry on the work that more than 30 teams of volunteers started this year, said Heather Klason, a coordinator for the 389-congregation Minnesota Conference. They have also sent tons of supplies and more than $1 million, a state conference record for a single cause.

"As some of the basic cleanup gets completed, more skilled people are needed, so this fall we'll try to send down more retired people with specific skills," Klason said. The church "intends to hang in there" for what it estimates will be an 8- to 11-year recovery, she said.

An array of other faith groups is continuing to pour forth money and help. "Churches are the engine of this recovery," said Daniel Webster, spokesman for the National Council of Churches.

To count only a few, the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has given more than $450,000 and Twin Cities African-American Baptist churches have sent more than $100,000, as well as volunteer cleanup teams and resettlement aid for displaced families.

"Something about this disaster has resonated in people as they remember the words we have preached over the years about helping others," said Craig Johnson, the ELCA's Minneapolis bishop.

Lutheran Social Service has gathered traumatized children in more than 40 sessions of therapeutic Camp Noah, an idea born during the 1997 Red River flood. Camp Noah's volunteers and licensed therapists offer a curriculum emphasizing "hope for the future," Johnson said.

For the Rev. Billy Russell, pastor at Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis, the effort has been personal. The Columbia, Miss., native, who has relatives displaced by Katrina, has recruited hundreds of people for church trips and continues to collect money for Katrina relief every Sunday.

"One pastor told me that if it weren't for church help, people just wouldn't be able to go on," Russell said.

Volunteer groups tend to steer clear of disaster-response politics. But some cannot contain their frustration over the enormity of the work government has yet to tackle.

"I'm a strong believer in charity, but it's hard for me to say that our government has done enough," said David Magy.

Many Gulf Coast residents use stronger terms to contrast help from the Good Samaritans who keep arriving with the perceived failures of government, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has acknowledged that there have been problems with its response.

'FEMA is a curse word'

"Minnesota was here before FEMA," said Jennifer Vidrine, who helps displaced families in Ville Platte, La. "FEMA is a curse word to me."

Volunteer aid has been more consistent than government aid, she said.

And government benefits such as housing assistance are set to end as early as February for many hurricane victims. Charitable groups are urging members to renew their efforts even as summer, the fertile season for volunteers, ebbs.

"When FEMA is gone, when the Red Cross is gone, we'll still be there," vowed Melvin Talbert, a retired United Methodist bishop who heads a Gulf Coast rebuilding group for the National Council of Churches. "For Christians, this is at the heart of the gospel, the call of Jesus to treat all other humans as our brothers and sisters."

For volunteers of every calling, the work satisfies a yearning for hope in a troubled world, a desire to believe that people can connect their abilities and needs to make life better in ways large and small.

The Nechama group working in the ruins of New Orleans this month included a firefighter, a homemaker, a nurse, teachers, artists, a massage therapist and students.

One bungalow they gutted belonged to a 52-year-old cook, Schelaine Robair. With no flood insurance, she had been saving her $20,000 in disaster aid for rebuilding. She faced a city deadline of Aug. 29 for gutting the house, which had stood in 7 feet of water, or having it condemned.

"I love it," Robair exulted as the volunteers wheeled everything from her rusted shower doors to her kitchen sink to the curb. "I was so worried about how I was going to get my house cleaned out."

Most of the volunteers spent a week of nine-hour days at work that Pam Hove, 29, of Highland Park, said was "the most foul" she had ever done.

Toxic dust flew. Rusty cans in cupboards collapsed into stinking puddles of rotten food when touched.

But there were also sweet moments, Hove said, such as the outpouring of gratitude the volunteers received when they uncovered a photo album in the wreckage.

During a water break outside Robair's house, one member of the Minnesota volunteer group burst into song in Hebrew, then others picked up the joyous refrain. It echoed down a street still strewn with sadness and debris.

"Behold, how good it is for brothers to sit together," they all sang with gusto.

Sharon Schmickle • 612-673-4432 Pamela Miller • 612-673-4290