Enclosed you will find a first hand account form a GAPPer of the first order. Robbie is a professor at LSU and right in the middle of things. This pretty much speaks for itself. If you can help her ne adopted family, I'm sure she would be surprised. I am just glad she is OK because it sounds like it could have been much worse. THXS, Cookie
Hi, Cookie!
Thanks for your e-mail. You have no idea how much it means to me that friends in other parts of the country are aware of what's happened down here. I tried to call everyone late last night, but no answer. Lots of cell phone towers are down, and I stupidly canceled my long distance service on my home line last year. So people are making long distance calls realy early in the morning or really late at night.
My family and my house are fine. My mom lives in New Orleans and usually will NOT get out in a hurricane because she is deathly afraid of being stuck in the "contra-flow" evacuation traffic. Luckily, though, she happened to be in Lafayette visiting one of my brothers. So far we don't know the condition of her apartment building.
In Baton Rouge, one of my neighbor's trees fell on our garage, but I needed a new roof on it anyway. We put a tarp over it and will deal with that later.
My daughter Beth is a junior at Spring Hill College in Mobile. She and her friends evacuated to Atlanta and partied for a week. Now she is highly insulted that they had to come back and resume school on Labor Day!
Baton Rouge has become a circus. Population grew from 420,000 to 800,000 in a week. Traffic is snarled, store shelves are empty, gas lines are long.
But no one is complaining because what all these extra people escaped from is a thousand times worse than our inconveniences.
My son Robert and I volunteered late at night at the Triage Center for the first few nights, but then we met a family that had been airlifted out of their home and ambulanced up to Baton Rouge, so we ivited them to move in with us. So now we have a couple named Bernadette and Harold and their two adopted nine-month old babies, Kyla and Little Harold. Little Harold has sickle cell disease, and Kyla's birthmom was HIV Positive, so that's why they got out of New Orleans so fast. Sick people did not get caught up in the terrible fiasco at the Superdome or the Convention Center. Turns out that Bernadette is a teacher and their daughter is a freshman here at LSU so we have become fast friends. In fact, this afternoon a news crew from some big TV organization in Germany is coming over to interview us about what's happened this week. Unfortunately, I don't remember much German past "Grus Gott!" and "Eine Beir, bitte!"
LSU has really stepped up to the challenge. Our sports complex has been turned into a medical center, with helicopters landing on the track and football fields, critical care cases in our basketball dome, and traige and mentally ill patients in the fieldhouse (and a morgue in another area).
Four student parking lots have been given over to FEMA and the media trucks (students are mad about that!) and even the vet school has become a shelter for all sorts of pets and livestock. The University of New orleans has set up shop on our campus and we have 1400 displaced students enrolled in our classes now. Their stories would break your heart.
We in the College of Education are going to open a charter school for the kids living in the shelters, with our faculty doing demonstration lessons that our education majors will then repeat with small groups of kids. Our students are excited - no more lectures!
Life is crazy down here. Unbelievable amounts of clothing and food arrive all day long, and helicopters and ambulances are constantly passing. The family that is staying with me has been given lots of things. What they are worried about is having to tear down their house and rebuild. I guess if you'd still like to do something, they could use a small check. Their names are Mr. and Mrs. Harold Baudy. Our address is 1939 Glendale Avenue, Baton Rouge, LA 70808. If you have friends that might want to contribute, that would be awesome.
I hate that I am so bad at keeping in touch with people that a disaster has to occur for me to be reminded of how many great friends I have around the country. Thank you so much for contacting me, Cookie. Surely one of these days we'll get together for a long visit!
Love, Robbie
Love, Robbie