Lending a helping hand

By Douglas Sulenta
The Collegian

Fresno State students and faculty assisting victims of Hurricane Katrina faced challenges both at the sites and in planning the trip to Louisiana.

The trip, organized and funded largely by Daniel Griffin, of the Fresno State Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, began on Jan. 5 with the students leaving the Fresno State on a bus bound for San Jose. From there they flew to Minneapolis, MA, and caught another flight to New Orleans where they arrived at 5 pm.

Students made their home at a local church during their stay in Slidell. When they arrived at the church, already there was a group of Christian relief colunteers from Iowa State, and during their stay they met groups from Ohio, Oregon and Alabama.

The church, like the rest of the city, did not escape the wrath of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction.

“When we got a chance to get into the building (after the hurricane) we saw that we had three and a half feet of water through the structure,” said John Boehem, an associate pastor for the church. “But that first Saturday we had a crew here from Baton Rouge that had already started taking the mud out and cutting the pews up with chainsaws and taking them out.”

At least three houses needed to be completed by the students from Fresno State. With the work involved at the sites, students needed to have a desire to help others.

Well represented on the trip was the Greek membership of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity who, along with Isaac Lopez brought six of their brothers to aid in the relief efforts. Lopez, Interfraternity Council president and vice-president of SAE, played a large part in the recruitment and enlistment of students for the trip.

“Dr. Griffin had said there was a lack of Greek involvement (on the trip),” said Lopez, who also thanked Melissa Ditmar and Chris Fiorentino for their role in rallying the students.

“As IFC president, I brought it up at a council meeting, then I brought it up in my own chapter meeting. And then, being in the Associated Student Senate brought it up there. Then we sent out a mass email and they put it on the website. Once we got a few students it was easy to convince the rest of them.”

“The original idea came up right after the storm by just watching the newspapers and seeing everything. I talked to several people on campus about getting a group down there,” he said. “And at that time there were a lot of people saying not to come down here, just send food and clothing.” That idea, after a lot of planning and changes in planning, spawned into the endeavor that it turned into today.

The original plan was to take a group of about 20 faculty, staff and community volunteers to Louisiana in vehicles, but they then decided that they would like to bring students down there with them. With this, Dr. Griffin got a group of students together and soon made contact with Janet Stains, a woman with Our Lady Of Lourdes Church who agreed to house the group from Fresno State. These plans changed the Thursday before the group left when building inspectors came to the church and deemed the building unsafe to stay in.

This information set Dr. Griffin back for a moment.

“What do we do now? I bought 46 non-refundable, non-transferable plane tickets. I’m out $13,500 for tickets, and we’re not going to go now,” Griffin recalls. “I was going to be eating some serious crow. Who’s going to give me $13,500, and how could I take any money for not going anywhere?”

Luckily, Stains put Griffin in contact with Pastor Bruce Efferson at the First Baptist Church, who promptly agreed to house the students at his facilities.

Though the financial problem of the plane tickets was averted, the trip wasn’t without personal cost for Dr. Griffin. Prior to the trip, fund raising gathered only about $18,000 for the trip, but the trip cost in total about $27,000. This $9,000 Dr. Griffin has paid for out of his own pocket and is currently accepting donations and doing community fund raising to recoup these costs.

Though the trip accomplished a lot of good, it wasn’t without its problems though. One student was injured on a job site when she tried to pick up a heavy object and put her back out. This required a trip to the hospital and a couple days of bed rest for her. Another student, Joseph Do, was called away from the trip when he received news that his father had had a heart attack and was in the hospital. Receiving this news late Wednesday evening, he was on an airplane first thing Thursday morning. Joseph’s father is now in recovery and doing well.

Other people participatingin the program included Fresno State staffers Bruce Whitworth and Dan Westbrook, as well as community volunteer Dan Lundin. Without Mr. Westbook’s carpentry expertise, Mr. Whitworth’s leadership and Mr. Lundin’s assistance, the trip could well have gone much less smoothly than it did.

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