It seems like only a few short weeks ago that it was final exam and graduation time on campus, but in reality, it has been over three months, so over course of the next two articles, I will try to address the perennial “what did you do this summer?” question. This week will focus on the May BonaResponds trip to Dickinson, Texas, and next week will focus on what BonaResponds did locally over the summer.
After graduation, we followed up our spring break success and went back to Dickinson, Texas to continue the cleanup and rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The time there was not long, and we didn’t have nearly as many volunteers as we would have liked, yet the trip was both productive and memorable. We gutted homes, cleaned up debris that was still in the trailer park where we had worked in March, hung drywall and fixed steps. We saw how slow recovery can be and experienced the nearly unbearable heat of the Texas Gulf Coast in late May, where temperatures in attic crawl spaces climbed above 120 degrees.
On every trip we are reminded of the fact that luck and fate play a major role in life. This is especially visible in disaster after disaster, one house can be destroyed and a family homeless, while another on the same street can be perfectly fine.
The trip to Dickinson opened us to stark reality as we found ourselves in Sante Fe, Texas the day that 10 people were killed and another 13 wounded in a shooting at the high school. It was truly a sad, gut-wrenching, and somewhat scary time. We were reminded of the fragility and randomness of life when helicopters flew overhead, cashiers stopped the checkout routine to hear that the daughter of a family friend had been shot and radios blared warnings for hours and later repeatedly replayed scenes of the morning in interviews with students.
In addition to the work itself, the highlight of the trip was Sherlee, who lived in Galveston until 2008 when she lost her home to Hurricane Ike. She moved inland to La Marque to be near family, including several with severe health issues who were, as of May, in nursing homes and/or the local hospital.
Harvey hit in August 2017. It was nine months later, and her house was still a mess. She was having respiratory problems, and money to rebuild was scarce. Contractors were too expensive. Volunteers were in short supply. So she waited. A tarp, which an early group of volunteers had used to cover a hole in the roof, was blown off by heavy winds. Rainwater spewed into the home, and mold proliferated to every room in the house.
We gutted her house using two large dumpster-sized bags, and over 70 contractor-sized garbage bags. It was well over 100 degrees in the house, yet every single time Sherlee greeted a volunteer, it was with a smile and the same saying: “I might be homeless, but I am never hopeless.”
It is a truism of almost all BonaResponds projects that we are made better by those we help, but few are better examples of carrying on in the face of adversity. Sherlee has lost two homes to two different hurricanes and she has multiple family members with serious health issues for whom she is the primary caretaker, all while being homeless a year after the most recent hurricane. Yet she carries on every day with the hope for a better tomorrow.
There is an encore to this amazing story. In the months since returning, we have been in contact regularly with Sherlee. The tarp is holding, but she is still waiting for a new roof and new walls. The house has dried out. She still has so much hope, in fact, that she is taking her church’s youth group to the nursing home where they will be making WarmSnugglyBlankets!
Lead on Sherlee, lead on. BonaResponds Notes:
● It has been a great kickoff to the new school year. In the first two weeks back, volunteers have packed 265 drawstring backpacks with school supplies for the Bona Buddies program and the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission School in Eastern New Mexico, 149 backpacks of toiletries and winter hats for the homeless and made 130 WarmSnugglyBlankets.
● It is never too late to join us! We can always use more volunteers and especially more leaders. Come out this Saturday; we will be building steps and a deck in Olean. Meet at 10:45 a.m. at the BR trailer in the lower parking lot near the baseball field. We will try to return by 5 or 6 p.m.
● I am happy to be writing a regular article on BonaResponds again this semester and want to thank the BV editors for giving me the opportunity.
By Jim Mahar Professor Columnist
jmahar@sbu.edu
