In the Lakeview section of the city, two church schools are up and running, flourishing even, while the public school lies in ruins. Neighborhood people say St. Dominic’s Catholic and St. Paul’s Episcopal schools–both pre-K to grade 7–became leaders of the comeback of Lakeview. Edward Hynes Elementary however has lain untouched since the hurricane and is due to be demolished. Therein lies the controversy.

In the first place, city agencies have more hoops to jump through than private schools, we’re told, more red tape and more complex financing issues to deal with. A school board member said, “We lumber like a mastodon.”

After the storm when people were re-entering Lakeview, the very-active parents organization mobilized volunteers who arrived at Hynes Elementary ready to gut out and clean their school. They were turned down by the Orleans Parish School Board, due to liability issues and the need for FEMA to get in and assess damages.

So, while the two church schools welcomed volunteers and contributions from encouragers across America and got on with the rebuilding, Hynes Elementary lay there, just as it does today, untouched. Like a bad time capsule. The chief financial officer for the school board explains that dealing with heavily damaged properties like Hynes is not as high a priority as reopening schools with greater potential. When the weeds at Hynes became scary, parents and neighbors convinced the board to have the lawn cut. One small victory.

The school board has put Hynes on the list for demolition and total replacement. This puzzles the community. Even though FEMA declared the building as more than 51 percent damaged–thus qualifying it for replacement–some local construction companies have toured the building and found it solid.

The principal, on the other hand, admits the building was decaying even before the storm. She says FEMA found greater damage than can be seen by a walk-through. This appears to be a great opportunity to get a new building and who can blame her. The fact that the school will not be in operation until the 2009 year matters some but not a great deal since the community is still sparsely re-settled.

The Essence festival in New Orleans this week has welcomed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as major speakers. Both candidates for the Democratic nomination for President promise that the rebuilding of this city will be a large feature in their administrations.

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In my previous request, I asked for cards for Pop’s 95 birthday and I might have mentioned to many of you, that he received right at 160 (depends on who did the counting). Mom will be 91 on July 14 and we have never had a card request for her and she does not need to be left out. So….here’s my request…a birthday card for her to the following address:

Lois McKeever 191 County Road 101 Nauvoo, Alabama 35578

It will be appreciated if you will do this and you might mention it to other members of your family since when you get to be 91, most of your friends and relatives are already gone on.

When you get to be 91 or 95, let me know and I will return the favor. Thanks a million!!!

Ronald J. McKeever

rjmdsm (at) excite.com

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Driving back home from North Alabama Tuesday, I stopped for a rest in Picayune, Mississippi, and read the Biloxi newspaper. As with our paper, it was saturated with Katrina news. A charitable eatery called “God’s Katrina Kitchen” was being shut down by one of the towns on the Mississippi coast.

Ever since the dark days following Hurricane Katrina, the good people manning this food ministry have been doling out free meals to construction workers and volunteers and storm victims. They’ve even relocated a couple of times, and are allowing the homeless to sleep on their premises. That’s what caused the problem, evidently, for the townspeople say crime is following the kitchen and it’s now time to shut the ministry down. When the town council voted to do just that, some applauded and others wept.

That is a microcosm of life in these Gulf cities these days. The same event is often good news and bad news.

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In Reader’s Digest, October 2004, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones says, “For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.”

Ten years ago, when two good friends of mine–both widowed and family friends for ages–decided to marry, they agreed to keep both their houses. Ann Marie says, “Rick’s house is too small for all my stuff.” Rick says, “It’s just about large enough for her clothes.” She smiles, “Besides, it’s on the golf course and he loves to golf.”

Rick says, “After breakfast, she leaves and goes to her house. She works around there, in and out all day, and then we get back together at night.” Ann Marie says, “I have friends whose husbands have retired and they’re underfoot all day. This is so much better.”

Besides, I suggested, you each have grown children and they have families, so this gives you more room to have them over.

I told them about two other friends, Winfield and Barbara, both widowed. I’m going to hazard a guess about their ages when they married, again about a decade ago. He was perhaps 70 and she was 55. I’m just guessing, Barbara. (She reads this.)

Winfield owned a house in Nashville and Barbara had a home in Cumming, Georgia. They kept their houses and lived in both of them, a few days or a couple of weeks here, then there.

I gave them the famous Tallulah Bankhead quote. Asked if she thought separate beds were necessary for a happy marriage, she answered in that husky Hollywood voice, “Separate beds nothing! Separate towns.”

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1. All our facilities hosting church volunteer teams coming to help rebuild the city are overflowing. A minister from Tennessee called me this week. “Dr. Harold Bryson said you might be able to help us. We were headed for the Mississippi Coast to help with a project that we understand has been canceled. We’re coming Sunday. There are 40 of us.” I called Bob Christian at Hopeview in St. Bernard Parish. He said, “Joe, we can host 150 people here, and we have over 200 coming next week.” I knew the NOAH Volunteer Village was in the same situation, so made a call to FBC Norco. Pastor’s wife Rose French said, “We have 20 bunk beds and have accommodated as many as 28, but tell them to come on. We’ll take them.”

2. Yesterday, the Louisiana Road Home program met with hundreds of applicants for grants in a feeble attempt to reach 10,000 for the month. They hoped to give out 900 grants yesterday. People were standing in long lines in the hot sun–but if they were successful, most felt it was well worth the wait.

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It’s hot in New Orleans. Summer, which officially arrived last Thursday, did what she normally does–arrived in mid-May and threw a blanket over New Orleans and made herself at home like she owned it.

A group of youth and sponsors from Faith Baptist Church of Texarkana, Arkansas, are doing the summer camp at Highland Baptist Church this week. While spending Tuesday morning drawing all the kids, I said to one of them, “Good thing you’re Southerners. You know about hot weather.” He said, “Yeah…but this is something else.”

Yes, it is. It’s called the humidity.

When we moved to this city to attend seminary over 40 years ago, one of the first things Margaret and I did was buy an air-conditioner. We’d managed in Birmingham, Alabama, with only a window fan, but it was “something else” down here.

The Wednesday pastors meeting welcomed 25 today, about normal for the summer months. Thuong Le of the Vietnamese Baptist Church just returned from 2 months in his home country, teaching preachers, and brought with him a minister who is going to establish a work in New Orleans East where so many Vietnamese live. Pastor Le said, “After his initial 3 months are up, we hope to have found the finances to support him so he can continue the work.”

(As always, for a complete account of the pastors meeting, go to www.bagnola.org where administrative assistant Lynn Gehrmann posts her notes.)

“Since we’ve been taking visiting church groups into New Orleans and the lower parishes,” Rudy and Rose French reported, “we have felt that we need to be knocking on doors in our own neighborhood of Norco.” Rose told us, “The problem was what to use to get people to open their doors and talk to us.” She thought of the baskets of toiletries and household items they’ve been distributing in St. Bernard Parish–and that’s where Rudy was today–and said, “The people of Norco did not have a lot of hurricane damage, so they don’t need that. They needed something else.” So she asked the Lord.

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