[StBernard] Holy Cross helps relief efforts

[Westley Annis]

Holy Cross helps relief efforts
BY JOHN ERARDI | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
NEW ORLEANS - This column is coming to you from the Big Easy, because that
is where I begin today's scribblings. I'm here to cover the national college
football championship game.

I'm thinking about Kentuckians involved in the recovery from Hurricane
Katrina. I know, for example, that student relief groups from Holy Cross
High School in Latonia have been here.

I visit with residents of Central City, where eight feet of standing water
sent thousands of evacuees wading to the Superdome in late August, 2005.
Downtown, I speak with cabbies, waitresses, bartenders and musicians, and
feel the pride in the recovery here.

I call Dan Trame, former basketball coach at Holy Cross High School. He
teaches math there, and has organized three relief trips here in the past
two years.

It just so happened that Dan's first non-coaching season after six years of
running the boys' basketball program at Holy Cross coincided with the
arrival of Katrina.

"The more I watched on TV, the worse I felt for those people," Trame says.
"I wanted to do something for somebody. I had just left coaching, and it
opened up some time."

On the Internet, he got hooked up with a food mission in Natchez, Miss., and
traveled there over Thanksgiving 2005 - less than three months after Katrina
hit - with six students and a truckload of food. After dropping off the food
in Natchez, they drove to New Orleans to personally see the destruction.

At Thanksgiving 2006, they visited St. Bernard Parish, a 680-square mile
area of 23,000 homes, all but six of which were flooded when the eye of
Katrina passed over the eastern section of the parish and sent a 25-foot
storm surge into the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and destroyed the parish
levees. Left behind was devastation and five to 12 feet of standing water.

"When we were there that November, there were only four businesses
operating: McDonald's, a Rally's, a Home Depot and a Shell gas station,"
Trame says.

A community of 67,000 people had been reduced to 7,000.

"When we went back last June, we were disappointed how few additional
business had come back," he says. "But this past Christmas, there was quite
a bit of improvement."

At 9 p.m. on the day after Christmas, a school bus carrying 26 students and
five adult chaperones left Holy Cross. It arrived 13 hours later at 9 a.m.
local time in St. Bernard Parish.

"I can't believe they showed up when they did," says Bob Roberts, who
assists the pastor at Abdullah Christian Church here with relief work. "We
had just received tons of furniture from a St. Louis hotel chain and were
storing it in a big church on the south shore of Lake Ponchatrain.

"The kids from Holy Cross spent three days moving it to an abandoned strip
mall in St. Bernard Parish that they cleaned up wearing gas masks, so we
could store it there for free and save $500 per month in warehousing costs.
I told my wife, Sandy, 'Those are our angels right there.' "

Roberts says "85 to 90 percent" of all the gutting of homes in St. Bernard
Parish has been done by Christian groups worldwide.

"We didn't sit and wait around for the government," Roberts says. "If we
had, we'd still be waiting."

As a result, lives are being changed here. Not just of the locals.

"I went on the trip because it was my last chance to show myself I could
make a difference," says Holy Cross senior Matt Bodner, a baseball player
from Villa Hills. "On the last day, standing there covered head to toe in
dust and soot and moving furniture, I remember thinking, 'I know we're
making a difference here.' "

"I'd do it again - I didn't want to leave," says fellow senior Trista Wolfe
of Covington, an outfielder on Holy Cross' back-to-back state softball
champions. "It was the best experience of my life."

As part of its mission work, Holy Cross has "adopted" the Nata family of St.
Bernard Parish - father Russell, mother Susan, daughter Shelby (12), and
sons Alex (9) and Evan (2) - and raised $3,800 toward moving them out of the
trailer parked in their yard. The parents sleep on the floor of the trailer,
the kids in the family bed.

"Most of us do grunt work when we're in St. Bernard Parish," Dan Trame says.
"But (former Bengals player and Holy Cross football coach) Bruce Kozerski
went with us on this last trip and he did plumbing and helped Russell Nata
tile his kitchen."

Another $1,200 is needed to get the Nata family moved into their home.

Donations can be sent to Holy Cross High School, 3617 Church St., Covington,
Ky., 41015, Attention: Katrina Relief.