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Strangers openeu hearts, wallets to aid survivors
By KAT BERGERON______________________
THE SUN HERALD
■	Nineteen years before Camille’s turbulent arrival, a Nobel Prize-winning Mississippian described the human character that would salve the ugly, gaping hurricane wounds of Aug. 17, 1969.
“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. . . because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance,” William Faulkner observed in 1950.
The aftermath of Camille welled with Faulkner’s compassion from every comer of the United States. But stories have recounted the sacrifice and endurance of the
250,000	residents.
Though not intentional, second-billing goes to the thousands of good Samaritans, most of them nameless strangers, who poured their dollars, food and clothing, prayers and volunteer hours into the Coast’s recovery pot. Combined, they gave millions with no expected return.
Goodwill came from as far as California and as near as Louisiana.
“Our people feel they can’t do too much, ” said Baton Rouge Mayor Woody Dumas. “A few miles difference in the storm's path, and it’d be us needing help.”
Baton Rouge’s first 20 truckloads of food, medicine and supplies arrived Monday night, less than 12 hours after Camille’s winds had subsided. The city’s trucks soon numbered 100.
Myrtle Beach, S.C., raised $8,000, remembering all too well the devastation they’d experienced with Hurricane Hazel in 1954. Cali-
fornians James Eide and Walter Quave drove all the way from Santa Clara with a load of food and gas. Enterprise, Ala., collected four truckloads, and Pensacolans filled 17 vans with cleaning supplies, safety matches and dishes.
Fort Wayne, Ind., crammed a truck with clothing and linen after the plans of a former Coast resident, Catherine Gieger, mushroomed into a citywide project. Gieger had planned to send a small box, so she sent a note to her new neighbors to see if they’d like to contribute. The media picked up the story, and donations poured in.
Too much of a good thing
In the beginning, most communities sent clothing, but as Coast warehouses became stacked ceiling-high, they switched to essentials.
Mississippi dairies filled milk cartons with much needed water; Coca Cola Bottling of New Orleans used bottles. Illinois Central Railroad sent water tanks and Pullman sleepers to house rescue workers.
Bristol Myers Laboratories in New York flew in $10,000 in drugs, and Wyeth Labs in Georgia added 600 cases of baby food.
Eight power generators, among the most sought-after items on the electricity-starved Coast, were donated by Honda Co. of Virginia. The Purina Feed Co. sent a ton of pet food.
Hardest-hit Pass Christian received a Cadillac ambulance from Bay Town, Texas, and hundreds of Coast children got an early Christmas from the Jefferson Parish Doll
&	Toy Fund.
“I gain more than the person I’m
helping, ” admitted Myron Schultz a Mennonite farmer from Montana. The Mennonite Disaster Service had rushed down, first to help clean up, then to repair and rebuild.
U.S. uncages its heart
Mississippi’s Gov. John Bell Williams hit the nail on the head: “People from all over the United States have opened their hearts to us.”
The Salvation Army and the American Red Cross forever endeared themselves to the Coast by sending hundreds of relief workers, supplying thousands of meals and spending millions Of dollars.
Volunteer policemen from Alabama, New Orleans and upstate Mississippi helped the local force keep looting at a minimum. National Guardsmen from this state and many others helped in search, clean-up and martial law.
By Thursday, three days after the storm, the Georgia Guard had flown 14 missions, depositing more than 400,000 pounds of foodstuff. They also brought communications equipment for Keesler Air Force
Base in Biloxi, which, as a goodwill gesture, set up a system to let outsiders know their Coast relatives had survived.
Six ham radio operators from Pensacola, Fla., came to deliver messages, then set up operations at the Seabee Center in Gulfport for out-going messages.
Soldiers, soldiers everywhere
From military bases everywhere came laborers, experts, equipment, even dogs to help locate bodies. Those already stationed here acted as if the Coast was their hometown.
Not to be overlooked are the accounts of the hometown-folk.
Sixty prisoners from Harrison County jail volunteered for the nightmarish jobs of searching for bodies.
Coast businesses handed out free food, rather than let it spoil and claim write-offs.
Then there are the federal and state agencies who distributed millions, sometimes in the form of loans, but often as donations.
Money rained down on the Coast
from strange places. A $500 check from Dyersburg, Tenn., was signed fro.m Santa Claus with the instruction: “Use as you see fit for the victims of Hurricane Camille. Santa does come more than once a year.” The check cleared the bank.
The biggest monetary gift came from the “We Care” telethon that had attracted the likes of comedian Bob Hope, the Gold Diggers and Bobby Goldsboro. That hot August day at the Coliseum in Jackson, $1.3 million was collected.
Contributions stretched from a child’s handful of nickels to $100,000 from the St. Petersburg, Fla., business community. When the phone rang in the middle of the telethon, Bob Hope picked up to find President Richard Nixon on the other end.
“I think what is done through this kind of activity, where people all through the country volunteer not only their money but also their help — this is really the true American spirit,” the president said.
“With this kind of heart, America is going to do all right in the years ahead. ”
Help
Continued from Page 14
fixed and mobile Disaster Assistance Centers, helping to direct folks who had losses to people waiting to help them. The papers were then distributed everywhere on available routes hewed through the mountains of debris that Camille had tossed everywhere like match-sticks. And that public service went on for months.
Radio and TV news stations did their large share-, and more, of almost continuous public service messages and interviews and remote story feeds as power restoration continued, hence intensifying the recovery drumbeat. We salute them, too, again on a tough job well done!
Another reward for us was the opportunity to meet and work with some mighty fine Americans . . . new friends, actually. . . during an
inspiring Battle to Rebuild. And rebuild with great vigor and stubborn determination you surely did! Luckily for us, we have been privileged to witness this scenario repeated many times during these years.
We are usually awed watching Americans straining to begin again, with but a brief pause, following times of great peril and even greater challenges in the midst of often warlike destruction.
Finally, we must note that, later, you Mississippians didn’t merely face the Gulf and forget others when the June 1972 destruction of Tropical Storm Agnes spared you and decimated the Northeast. But rather, on the strength of a phone call, plus the staggering realization of the damage wrought elsewhere, you re-assembled the splendid, compassionate, leadership team that rebuilt the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Soon, a sister city effort began as the Gulf leadership brought key Camille recovery information and hard won disaster experience with
them on Air Force planes flying the teams in several exchange visits with Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and the surrounding stricken Greater Wyoming Valley.
At Christmas time, to re-kindle what we disaster workers call the “snap back” spirit of the people, you all flew in again, this time with the Perkinston Junior College Choir and a plane-load of toys for the kids bought by the residents of the Gulf.
The choir sang carols in City Hall and in the snow at the base of a 40-foot Christmas tree you bought for the city square. You could color everyone warm and smiling those special two days in Wilkes-Barre! The Wilkes-Barre recovery moved forward under the battle slogan “Valley With A Heart, Cornin’ Back Better Than Ever!” The residents experienced the same tough challenges of the Gulf Coast three years before, and still inched forward.
We wrote a story back then, from a slowly recovering Wilkes-Barre, that was carried worldwide
under the headline “North Meets South In Battle To Rebuild. ” It was great. You all made it work. And it happened because you, too, cared about your neighbors up there. As testimony to that effort a steel bridge replaced a destroyed one and stretches across the Susquehanna in Wilkes-Barre, dedicated to that caring friendship that knew no state borders.
That’s the second time you made many of us disaster gypsies proud to count you as our friends and neighbors. But then, our jobs on the front line, with you, or folks like you, always made us feel that way.
Through our years of working in disasters it seemed to us that those magnificent efforts sent a clear message to those beyond our nation’s borders. The message was that Americans care deeply for each other.
Those who would be our enemy today often sell us short on resolve or take us lightly. Some see America as the world’s kicking boy; and many like to boot Uncle Sam. But
that is the apparent burden and the trial that falls to the nation who leads the free world.
And we all know that free world responsibility comes with an uneasy crown of restraint in the face of those who would test and antagonize us — witness the hijackings, hostage taking and bombings aimed at the USA.
But possible enemies we believe, would do well to heed the cohesive messages implicit in Americans helping Americans during such great natural disasters, for they bespeak of the sterling character of our people. But, then as we said, you in Mississippi know that fact very well.
In closing we wish to say thanks for being several warm and essential chapters of a splendid story in our lives! We won’t forget any of you.
■	Philip V. Gaddis, retired from the American Red Cross and is now a freelance writer. John P. Coleman is the deputy regional director of the Region Seven Office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.