Replies

Glad your friend has located his family. SirKit and I have been sitting here trying to figure out how we can help folks. It only hit me this morning just how hard hit my older sister's family was. She and her husband have lost their house, though they still have a little rental house on that property in which they can live. They're both retired so they still have their incomes. Their two older children however have lost everything. They both live and work in NO; Natalie's husband ran a family owned business suppying produce and food products to the restaurants in town. Natalie worked at a Seminary, and had a thriving portrait photography business. Kenneth worked at the Aquarium, and did construction on the side, but he and his wife also owned a house in Waveland and all that's left is the pilings. Kenneth's ex-wife, who is still a member of the family, as far as we're concerned and her new husband and son lived in Slidell. Her husband is a jeweler and owned an antique store in the French Quarter. Now they all can get employment elsewhere, because they are resourceful folks, but they literally have to start from the ground up. At least they owned the ground on which these dwellings were located, so they only have to re-build the structures.

Natalie and her husband brought both their cars out of NO which is good thing because when they got to H'burg, Natalie parked her car across the street from her grandmother's house, and during the storm a tree fell on it! So at least they have SOME wheels. Before Katrina hit, all the kids had planned a week's vacation together in Ft. Walton Beach. Alice and her husband actually went on over there when they left Slidell last Sunday. They decided to go ahead and keep that vacation date because there's nothing they can do about their situations at this point anyway. I'm sure there's a lot of mental energy buzzing there this week, figuring out what they can do in the near future.

Our family is blessed in that even though many are in dire straits, the others of us are in a position that we can do something for them to help them get back on their feet. I pray for the others who do not have folks who can help them and have to depend on bureaucrats. God help them!

How devastating.

But like we all keep saying, at least they have their lives.

I'm going to watch Little Bear with my girls for a while. See everyone later!

SuziQ, I can't imagine. Prayers for their good fortune pulling life back together.

That's just horrifying. I don't really have anything to lose at this point but stuff, I can't imagine working and building a life and then losing everything overnight.