Week One, Day Five

Thursday ...
The team goes back to the homes we were in yesterday afternoon. This is really motivating because it means we get to see our own progress. I tape the rest of the interior of 264 Nixon Street and, at 11am, I look around and realize that I’m done. Three rolls of tape after I started and it’s ready for my teammates to follow behind and paint. I’ve never done this before but Jim pays our team a visit and tells me I’ve done good work. My whole week has been made (again).

This afternoon, Michael from Architecture for Humanity will drive the volunteer team around town to show us other areas … but I have to admit that I’ll be bummed if I go back tomorrow and see that someone else has finished “my” job.

Our tour with Michael takes us up the beach (past “Sharkheads”, which is somehow still upright),
and we see really amazing Southern mansion-style homes with their 1st floors either totally exposed with no exterior walls or completely untouched (but empty just the same)
- there is no in-between. Katrina either rolled past your home or she rolled through it.

On the way to dinner, we find a Barnes and Noble which means (oh happy day!) a Starbucks. We get our coffees and spend our time at the Katrina table. Most of the books are focused on New Orleans, which has to be frustrating to the residents here. But there is VERY HAPPY news – today Michael and A.F.H. was written up in the local Sun-Herald (www.sunherald.com) and, in case the link is long gone by the time this gets posted, I’ll end my entry today with a quote and a photo from the article.

“Oprah Winfrey, thousands of her fans and teams of architects are working together to help families rebuild. Oprah’s ‘Angel Network’ is the anonymous donor paying for the rehabilitation of 70 storm-damaged houses and the construction of four model homes for families who lost everything with a $3,000,000 grant to the East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center. Architecture for Humanity is designing the model homes and using contributions from its donors to build a fifth house.”
With grant money from Oprah's Angel Network and other sources, Bill Stallworth, director of the East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center and Mike Grote, project coordinator of the Model Home Program for Architecture for Humanity are looking forward to helping East Biloxi residents get back into houses after Hurricane Katrina.

Throughout our afternoon, Michael’s cell phone rings. Each time it does, we joke that it’s Oprah calling and that he’s blowing her off to hang with the four of us.

I have a new number to remember now. I’m done focusing on 13 months. I’d rather think about what $3,000,000 will do for East Biloxi, and I get to be part of it.