Heroes Abounding, Shepherds Abiding

by Jane Hines

Four thousand people came to the Mississippi coast to help with hurricane recovery efforts between August 29, 2005 and January 9, 2006. All 4,000 of them were heroes to someone. And the heroes all have heroes. There were shepherds in the eleven Presbyterian churches on the coast, keeping watch over their flocks. And the shepherds have shepherds. The stories they can tell would fill a book with thousands of pages. And there will be many more stories of faith, of grace, of gratitude, of blessings, in the years ahead. Katrina was such a terrible storm that recovery will take years and today, Presbyterians are still responding in record numbers.

At the beginning of the twentieth week after Katrina struck, Janet Hilley, the newly appointed interim editor of the VOICE, and I went to the Mississippi coast to give Janet an opportunity to see evidence of what will continue to be the biggest story in the Synod of Living Waters.

Burt Hinson and Samford Turner

We started out in the office of the Presbytery of South Alabama in Daphne, where recovery efforts actually began because the Presbytery of Mississippi was desperately in need of help and Samford Turner in South Alabama was able to be a first responder. We talked with Burt Hinson, a retired military officer and elder in First Presbyterian in Foley, AL, who was recruited by Samford Turner a few days after the storm to coordinate the calls from people wanting to help, matching them with situations where help was needed.

Since then Burt has become phone friends with people from Seattle to Maine and millions of volunteer hours have been donated. Burt was a volunteer himself in the beginning and is now being paid by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). “Without the churches, I don’t know what we would have done,”Burt told us.“The churches are still the most important factor in recovery efforts,” he added.

After our meeting with Burt, we traveled west on I-10, planning to stop at as many churches as possible, talking to as many people as we could find on a Saturday, with some appointments set up for us by Burt. Soon after we crossed over from Alabama into Mississippi, we came to First Presbyterian Church in Pascagoula. We were met there by Brad Lewis, youth minister at the church. It didn’t take long for us to realize that Brad is one of the heroes, one of the shepherds. Brad identified his heroes: Burt Hinson and Steve Bryant, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg. He told heartbreaking stories of his own family, his wife working long hours as an emergency room nurse, his parents and her parents devastated by the loss of their homes, and their pre-school children, who still have nightmares. “It is strengthening to have volunteer groups here,” Brad said. The church in Pascagoula was heavily damaged by the storm surge and they have been able to repair some of the building with the help of many volunteers and funding sources. “Church connections have helped so much,” Brad said, adding that more help is needed, but they have learned to depend on God and found that God is trustworthy.

From Pascagoula, we went to Gautier and met with Chris Bullock, the pastor, and Susan Duffee-Braun, recovery site coordinator. Susan told us how Chris checked on the whereabouts and situation of every single member of the church, immediately after the storm, and didn’t rest until every one was accounted for. Another shepherd taking care of his flock. Chris was quick to name the shepherds/heroes who helped to take care of him and the other pastors of churches in the path of Katrina: Samford Turner and Steve Bryant and George Bates. “They knew what we needed and they brought it,” he said. He especially wanted to thank the retired minister in Louisville who made a generous grant from her family at Christmas to fund a pastor’s retreat in Sandestin for the weary shepherds in Mississippi Presbytery. Chris, currently the moderator of the presbytery, will lead the group to rest in Florida the weekend after Easter.

We met Jane Isom, a volunteer from Princeton, Iowa, who came with her husband, Ray, on December 10, planning to stay a week or two. Now they have decided to stay and help out until April. We met a group of college students from Keene State in New Hampshire, who were busily restoring the home of a woman identified by the team at the Gautier Presbyterian Church. “Our church members, although many of them are displaced themselves, are reaching out into the community to help everybody else,” Chris told us. They are considering the possibility of rebuilding the church at another location and coordinating their plans with other groups. “We still need lots of outside help,” Chris said. The Presbytery of Mid- Kentucky is in a long-term partnership with this church, and everyone agreed that recovery here is definitely a long-term process, although they feel that there has been a paradigm shift and a new page in the process has begun.

Later in the month, we met with George and Linda Bates at the Synod meeting to get more information about what is happening in the recovery process in Mississippi Presbytery. Talking with them means talking to one of them while the other one is on the cell phone with someone who wants to come down and help out. It’s a constant process for these two shepherd/heroes who are the official coordinators of everything that is happening with the churches on the southern edge of the presbytery. They currently have volunteer work teams scheduled through July and then on into the fall. Spring break will be a busy time. At the first of January, there had been 343 teams in the seven Presbyterian church locations, which are: Bay St. Louis; Long Beach; Westminster in Gulfport; Handsboro in Gulfport; First in Ocean Springs; Gautier; and First in Pascagoula. There are now four Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Villages: one in a cow pasture in Gautier; one in D’Iberville; one in Orange Grove; and one in Pearlington.

“It’s never a question of them or us, the presbytery or PDA. It’s all us,” George said. They are working together. George, a retired professor of Animal Science and Research Director at Alcorn State University, is Moderator of the Administrative Commission for Hurricane Recovery in Mississippi Presbytery and also Disaster Recovery Coordinator for Mississippi Presbytery, funded by a grant from PDA. Linda is his assistant, funded by PDA. They say they don’t know how long they will be doing this, but will stay as long as there is work to do. Right now, there is no end in sight. The Bates have a home in Natchez, but right now and since December 1, they have been living in a Sunday School classroom at Handsboro Presbyterian Church in Gulfport.

Group from Keene State College, New Hampshire

“We don’t want to turn any work team away,” Linda said, “but the camps and churches are full right now. So many times our hearts have literally been overwhelmed with joy because of the volunteers.” Flexibility is the key if work teams are to meet current and urgent needs. To schedule a work date, email the Bates at gbates1002@aol.com or call their office at Handsboro in Gulfport at 228/604-2424 or fax 228/604-2425.

While we were on the coast we heard about another group that has made a big contribution to recovery efforts on the coast. When we got back to the Synod office, where we share space with the Presbyterian Outreach Foundation, we talked with their executive director Rob Weingartner about their involvement. “We normally don’t focus on disaster recovery,” he said, “but we had people who wanted to give money to Presbyterian churches on the Mississippi coast after the hurricane.” So far they have sent $850,000 to the Disaster Recovery Committee of Mississippi Presbytery, trusting their judgment about how it can best be used. They have also agreed to focus on and lift up two of the churches that need help: Gautier and Pascagoula. And here again, the name of Steve Bryant pops up as a first responder hero.

Janet reminded me that F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” We have seen the tragedy and we have named some of the heroes. It looks like the more than 4,000 heroes are going to overcome the tragedy, given the reality of the Grace of God.