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Mars Hill Team Finds Hope on Katrina-Ravaged Coast
by Josh Boatwright
Click photos to enlarge
One of many Gulfport businesses crushed by Katrina
In line for biscuits and gravy at Pass Road Baptist Church
Miss Thigpen sorts through a growing pile of debris
Tearing out drywall at the Club
Clearing out a room
Club Director Purvis McBride
Photo Credits: Top to bottom:
Photo 1: Patrick Lance; Photo 2: Josh Boatwright;
Photo 3: Rachel Hall; Photos 4, 5, 6: Josh Boatwright.
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From Mars Hill to Gulfport
While most of Mars Hill College packed for fall break, a group of 21 volunteers, some of us friends, many of us strangers, loaded up for Gulfport, Mississippi, where six weeks earlier lives and homes had been demolished by Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst storms in American history.
Fourteen hours later, at 3 a.m., our three-van convoy rolled off I-10 into downtown Gulfport, past crushed billboards, caved roofs, piles of garbage, and tents.
Our home that evening was Pass Road Baptist Church, a large sheet metal structure situated amidst some run-down shopping centers and the local airport whose planes buzz overhead frequently during the day. We spread our sleeping bags among other volunteers, mostly older men, who were already sound asleep in the aisles of the sanctuary.
Two days after Katrina hit, Mars Hill Junior Josh Lail had called the North Carolina Baptist Men, the service/relief wing of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, to ask about sending a team from Mars Hill College’s Christian Student Movement down to the Coast. Over the next month the team collected a room full of tools, raised $4,500 and obtained three vans from Mars Hill Baptist Church, First Baptist Church of Weaverville and from the college’s Bonner Scholars program.
The team also collected a diverse group of 21 volunteers, ranging in age from 18 to 61, including 13 students, 2 faculty members, a librarian, a parent, three men from the community and the college ministry intern John Templeton, who helped Lail coordinate the trip.
In the classroom, we had ethical discussions about the government’s response to the storm, and in theology class we questioned why such evil would befall the people down there. But, this weekend we would see the Gulf Coast first hand, testing our theories against muddy reality.
The North Carolina Baptist Men have made Pass Road Baptist Church the center of their Gulfport operations. A border of dumpsters surrounds their relief compound in the church parking lot. On one side, a fleet of Red Cross ambulances are parked in a row; on the other side are water tankers, supply trailers and tents where men and women in yellow t-shirts prepare three meals a day for all comers.
We joined other volunteers and local people in line for biscuits, gravy and eggs before sunrise.
Equipped with barely three hours of sleep, our team was dispatched to Forest Heights, a predominantly African American community where 210 houses had been flooded by the overflow of nearby Turkey Creek. Save for blue tarps on the roofs and FEMA trailers in the yards, the modest, ranch-style houses looked in decent shape. Inside, however, the walls were damp and pocked with mildew.
Our main target there was actually the local Boys and Girls Club, where 150 neighborhood kids once went daily after school to learn and play. Up to four feet of water had left the walls soft and green with mold; furniture, computers, and closets of supplies lay in ruin.
Mary Spinks Thigpen had taught arts and crafts at the club for the past eight years. Now, surrounded by boxes of ribbon and paint and stacks of kids’ activity books, she was trying to salvage whatever she could. Exhausted from days of work at the center and aching from a physical disability, she sat in a chair, directing us to bring her this stack of paper or that box of games so she could decide their fate.
Thigpen was a founding member of this community and has lived in Forest Heights for 41 years. She resides only a few doors down from the center and suffered from flooding just like the rest of her neighbors. While the center is gutted and restored, she will keep the salvaged supplies at her own house, underneath a tarp.
Throughout the day, a creative spirit indwelled our destructive work. Banter accompanied the clanging of hammers, smiles crept up behind our masks, and former strangers became friendly work partners as we tore out each ruined wall and removed debris by the wheelbarrow load.
Within days of Katrina, the North Carolina Baptist Men were mobilized to Gulfport, where they have been serving meals and coordinating volunteers ever since. At their base at Pass Road Baptist Church, they receive thousands of work requests for everything from cutting down trees to completely gutting houses. The Baptist Men intend to stay in Gulfport for next two years, with a goal of rebuilding 500 homes. These statistics describe the scope of their work as of November 3:
- 700,000 meals served from feeding units in Meridian, Gulfport and Lafayette.
- 33,000 volunteer days from NC Baptist Volunteers.
- 3,200 recovery jobs completed.
- 3,400 loads of laundry.
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Partnerships formed. Having never met before the trip and rarely wielding hammers, Juniors Joy Lorenz and Bekah Ludlow now fiercely attacked a bathroom wall, then moved on to the lobby. They shared laughs as they yanked out a cabinet or beat down the baseboards—this was more fun than tests.
Out by the street the pile of drywall, insulation, tiles, nails and books grew rapidly. Miss Thigpen stationed herself by the pile to salvage anything useful. When school let out, kids started arriving at the club instinctively and, gathering around the heap, they looked for something to play with.
“The center got messed up inside?” asked a little boy.
“Yeah baby, it got teared all up,” said Thigpen.
Some of them tried to go inside, but center director Purvis McBride told them to go home.
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