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Friday, October 07, 2005

Joel Dawson Serving in the Katrina Disaster Area

Gulfport, Mississippi - Joel Dawson, our neighbor and long time friend, decided to put her time where her heart is. Joel volunteered to the Red Cross to serve two weeks in the hurricane disaster area. On Saturday, Joel left Tallahassee and was flown to the Gulfport Area. She is living in a barracks with 400 other volunteer workers. She is helping hand out the money to hurricane victims. You are hearing this information third hand from me. She talks to George - her husband - on the cell phone every night. Here is George's report - printed with his permission -

"This email was in response to a question from my brother Joe who asked if people wanted to rebuild or leave and how were the elderly faring? This note grew from there.

I talked to Joel last night and she said that a number of people were looking for ways to leave but the vast majority were planning on rebuilding. She did tell me that she felt that the elderly were especially hard hit as all the work they had done in a lifetime was blown away. Many of them had paid off their houses but had lost them. In many cases the insurance would not cover the cost of rebuilding a new house. While ensured, many houses were small and old. A small new house meant financing the difference in the insurance coverage and the cost of the replacement and they did not have the income to do it. She met an optomatist who lost his office and equipment, his house, and because he will default on his parents home in Gulfport which he was financing, will lose it also. He simple cannot find a way to continue the payments.

Joel has told me on two different occasions how much she is enjoying working with volunteers from a great span of ages and backgrounds. She is impressed with how many young people are working in the relief efforts.

Late yesterday afternoon, she got a chance to go to the gulf front. She said the pictures we see on TV simply cannot convey the total devastation of the area.

Joel has been in touch with her niece. Trish's husband Chris is working in the area on an environmental cleanup. It turns out he was in the next building from where she was yesterday. They will try to connect.

Another connection twist is that our good friends Nancy Kenny and her husband Rob Althouse will be in Gulfport doing a video that will launch their PBS documentary on new urbanism/smart growth. This is a topic of intense interest with Rob and Nancy. From what I can gather, cities and villages, some of which have been wiped out down to the slabs want to rethink about how to rebuild. City planners have requested the help of Andres Duany who designed SeaSide here in N. Florida and similar communities in other places. They are video the conversations of city planners with Andres. Nancy and Rob will be in Gulfport next week, and then may come here for a leisurely visit the following week. We will be visiting them at the their home in Santa Fe in early November. Here is one of many web sites devoted to Duany: http://www.housingzone.com/topics/pb/management/pb02aa022n.asp

More later." -George Dawson

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