This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

nmiasz uesiruction, Death, the Lucky Live
By TOM GREGORY
(States-Item Staff Writer)
GULFPORT?In the midst of wreckage and death, there are people to whom the lack of air conditioning and the chore of washing diapers by hand are major problems.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Whiten and their five children live only five bTocks from the beach at Gulfport but their home
on a quiet residential street scarcely is damaged.
They have to make adjustments to the lack of electrical power, to the pos-poned school opening, to trees which have fallen all around them. But they are very much unlike Mr. and Mrs. John Ladner, formerly of Vidalia community and now of wherever they can find space for themselves and their three children.
THE LADNERS are perhaps the complete picture of hopelessness in the wake of Camille. They lost everything. Their two-week-old child sleeps on a blanket on a wood floor in a borrowed building and drinks donated formula.
When you ask the father what he will do next, he can only say, ?I don?t know. I guess we?ll stay here as long as we can.?
He has a job with a contracting company laying lines for the telephone company? but he doesn?t know when he?ll be able to go back to work.
Whiten doesn?t know, either. He was injured in an automobile accident several weeks ago and wasn?t working
i-
y
r
d
at his television repair shop even before the storm.
?I COULDN?T work anyway,? he said yesterday. ?No power.?
?We?re the lucky ones,? said Mrs. Whiten. ?We?re in good shape.?
A lot of other people on the coast are in ?good shape,? relatively speaking. Compared to most of the people of New Orleans, they are not, but compared to the Ladners, they are in very good shape indeed.
Mrs. Johncie Fayard must cook meals for her family on a barbeque grill outside?she has electric appliances and no power?but she has plenty tc cook.
LIKE MRS. WHITEN, she
stocked up on non-perishable foods before the hurricane.
A Red Cross convoy responding to an urgent call took food, water and the baby food to the isolated former school building where the Ladners and about 30 others took refuge.
The lucky ones realiae they could have been homeless in a shelter somewhere if the storm had been slightly different. Their conversations acknowledge this. But they are also human and Mrs. Margaret Williams of Gulfport can?t help complaining that ?it?s very difficult to have to get out and go somewhere ev-erytime you want to say something.?
Her telephone has worked twice?both times long distance calls Monday from a friend in Ocean Springs.
MRS. WILLIAMS? other ] ig complaint: A pecan tree ? ?I?ve been nursing for 19 years?? was blown down.
But grocery and department stores have reopened for these people and their families are safe.
Mrs. Whiten may have to wash the diapers of her year-ol^M by hand in the back vHkit she?s not ready to ^^^bes with anybody.
^^?ith the Ladners, an-