Mainers add volunteerism to New Orleans vacation

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Carey Haskell lives near the intersection of Griffin Road and Kenduskeag Avenue in Bangor, which is about as close as anyone in town is going to get to Bourbon and Saint Peter streets in New Orleans.

Haskell has decked out his garage in all things New Orleans. The pool table sports fleurs-de-lis, the stylized lily often associated with areas, such as Louisiana, that were settled by the French. And what homage to New Orleans would be complete without colorful Mardi Gras beads? Haskell’s got those, too, hanging from the ceiling.

It’s clear by the d?cor that Haskell and his friends, who gather in the garage for a game of pool, a cigar and a New Orleans-spawned cocktail called Sazerac, have developed a passion for the city. An annual spring trip to New Orleans for a week of sightseeing, eating and drinking has become a tradition.

This year, however, rather than spend every day as tourists, Haskell and his friends Andy Soule, a Dover-Foxcroft resident, and Hunter Tracy, a Bangor resident, volunteered for a day to work on a home in St. Bernard Parish, a working-class area just south of New Orleans that had catastrophic damage in 2005 when hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through the Southeast.

Many of the visitors who volunteer in the New Orleans area come in large groups through community organizations, churches, school groups or unions. It’s unusual for three individuals to volunteer on their own, according to Zack Rosenburg, director and co-founder of the nonprofit St. Bernard Project in Chalmette, La., through which the Maine group volunteered.

“Those guys were fantastic,” Rosenburg said. “They took precious time from their vacation to help someone else. It is rare, but it’s representative of the American work ethic.”

Stephanie Fortenberry, who owns the home in which the men volunteered, will be the beneficiary of their work. The renovations on her home, which was flooded with 20 feet of water in the storms, are almost finished.

Fortenberry said she just couldn’t abandon her house.

“That’s where I raised my daughter, where my husband and I lived for 26 years,” said Fortenberry, who is now staying with friends in Mississippi. “I just couldn’t turn away from my home.”

Haskell first went to New Orleans in 2005 with his wife, Loretta, for their 10th wedding anniversary. Hurricane Katrina hit 15 days after they flew home to Maine and Rita a few weeks later. Haskell watched the television coverage with sadness and disbelief, he said, as the place to which he felt an intense connection was flooded with water and emptied of people.

The following year Haskell was in Louisiana six times while working on a video project with friend and Bangor videographer Kimball Mitchell, another regular on the New Orleans trips. On one of their vacations, the group visited an elderly woman they had met through the video project.

That visit to her home in the Ninth Ward, an area of the city hard hit by the storm, left an impression on the group, as did other trips to the city. Tracy, for one, said based on media accounts he had seen he expected to meet residents who wanted to blame others for their plight.

But that wasn’t what he found.

“The people there are so proud of their city. All they talk about is their city pride, [that] New Orleans is gonna be reborn,” he said. “I live in Bangor and I complain about the services – gee, it took several hours to plow the road – and these people are in a whole different universe.”

As the group planned this year’s trip, Haskell looked for volunteer opportunities that would welcome a small group that could only commit for a day. He found the St. Bernard Project.

St. Bernard Parish was one of the hardest-hit areas when the storms came nearly three years ago. More than 200 parishioners died, according to the St. Bernard Project, and after the storms 100 percent of the 27,000-or-so homes there were rendered uninhabitable. The area was flooded for weeks.

The parish has also been one of the slowest to rebuild. Almost three years later, more than 60 percent of residences and businesses in the Parish remain uninhabitable.

The St. Bernard Project has helped rebuild 131 homes since August 2006, when the organization began working in the area. On average, it takes 6-8 weeks and $10,000 in building supplies to completely rebuild a home that has been gutted to the studs.

More than 7,500 people have volunteered with the St. Bernard Project. There have been 28 volunteers from Maine with all but eight from north of the Brunswick area.

Haskell, Soule and Tracy spent their volunteer time painting the interior of Fortenberry’s home in the town of Violet, which is just southeast of the center of New Orleans.

Fortenberry left her home before the storm, she said, but the house was robbed. Her wedding ring and her husband’s tools were taken.

“If a storm doesn’t destroy you, the people will,” she said.

When Fortenberry returned to the house after the storms, she found massive damage and mud inside up to her hips. Unable to fix the house at the time, she lived in Houston while caring for her sick husband, who died last fall.

Eventually Fortenberry returned to the house but made slow progress doing the work herself. The St. Bernard Project took over in January.

“Next thing I knew they were rebuilding my house,” she said. “These guys just came in and started doing the mold [removal], the wiring, plumbing, sheetrock.”

Volunteers can do a range of projects in the homes. Haskell, Soule and Tracy painted trim inside the house and worked on general cleanup. There was no electricity to the house, so the group had to use flashlights to paint corners and the insides of closets.

The trio worked at the house for about six hours with a break for a lunch of shrimp creole, po’ boy sandwiches and boiled crawfish at a roadside spot. It wasn’t hard work, but it was a challenge at times for guys who admit to their own shortcomings as handymen.

“I do my own work around my house. That’s it,” Haskell said with a smile. “I would have liked to have my diagonal [paint]brush down there, though.”

“Oh yeah, like that would have helped,” Soule said, eliciting laughs from the group.

Once the day was finished the group rewarded itself once with a pub crawl around New Orleans sponsored by the Abita Brewing Co., which is located north of the city. The rest of the trip included the usual sightseeing, cigars, food and drink. Haskell brought back more memorabilia for his garage, which has hanging on the wall a sketch of a painting he commissioned depicting his home at an imagined corner of Griffin Road and Bourbon Street.

It was nearly a typical trip for a group of guys who care about an iconic American city and wanted to show it. New Orleans has given them a lot of enjoyment over the years, they say, so why not give something back?

“The everyday people in New Orleans are working hard to get their lives back together,” Haskell said. “When you see that, you want to help.”

Fortenberry, one of those everyday people, knows she couldn’t have gone back without all of the volunteers.

“I want to send them all thank-you notes,” said Fortenberry, who can move back as soon as the house has its plumbing inspected and some cabinet work completed. “I would like to hug them and thank them all.”

For information about the St. Bernard Project, visit www.stbernardproject.org.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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