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CITY of BAY SAINT LOUIS, MISSISSIPPI Report of Clean-Up and Beautification Committee Year -- 1971
-PROLOGUE-
Bay Saint Louis is a lovely tree lined town located 65 miles east of New Orleans and 30 miles west of Biloxi, Mississippi. It has long been a summer home for families from New Orleans. The city covers 5.2 square miles and has a total year round population of 6,720. The residents live home centered lives -children, churches and schools are of utmost importance. Bay Saint Louis, a coastal city, has survived many storms and hurricanes and come back again. However, the last of these, Hurricane Camille, which struck on August 17, 1969, devastated, flattened, flooded and destroyed everything in its path, including many homes and buildings which had stood for over one hundred years. It left the town virtually treeless and no one untouched.
The year following the storm was taken up with clearing away the debris of houses and trees. Massive help was provided by the Corps of Engineers with huge equipment and manpower. The Red Cross and other aid agencies brought food, clothing, furniture and funds for	rehabilitation. Many	families	sought shelter
in government trailers until they	could repair	existing	homes or	rebuild destroyed
ones. This was a year of total chaos and frustration in the lives of our people. One day dawned and all the huge piles of wreckage were gone and the city resembled one vast trash dump. People	had lost all	sense of	neatness	and pride.
They had forgotten what it was to	have a neat,	clean town to live in.
Four women and their children in sheer desperation began spending one afternoon a week clearing the roadsides. They chose the most offensive and badly littered areas to clean and brought their litter bags and picked up all the loose debris and trash. People began to stop, and look and some few to ask questions -some too, to laugh, at the seeming futility of the task. The aid of the city was enlisted in getting the piles of bags picked up before the many stray dogs left homeless could tear them open and scatter the trash again. This continued through the spring and summer and into the fall.
Mayor Warren Carver then decided to form a Clean-Up and Beautification Committee. He sought a chairman but when he was unable to find anyone to take on so massive a task, he approached the four women who had already begun the job.
They agreed to be a working committee of four equal members with one named chairman for the sake of protocol. The committee consisted of Mrs. Wm. Hilliker, a
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