Three years after Katrina, Hugh Craft is still rebuilding
by Dave Hoekstra
The Rotarian -- December 2008
Hugh Craft drives around his beloved St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, USA, just six miles east of downtown New Orleans. He looks out the window of his car and sees a place he used to know. His eyes well up, but only for a moment. He has work to do.
Before August 2005, St. Bernard Parish had 68,000 residents. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, every home, along with 15 schools and 30 businesses, was under water for two weeks. Two hospitals were destroyed, and more than 200 parish residents lost their lives.
Craft, 69, saved the Rotary Club of St. Bernard (Chalmette), Louisiana, USA. “Everyone left the parish,” he says. “People were spread over multiple states. We were down to three Rotarians, but we never gave up our charter.”
The club stayed alive with the help of the local Covenant United Methodist Church, which also housed and fed the volunteers who came to rebuild homes in the parish. On 27 July 2006, the club held its first post-Katrina meeting there. “There was still no air conditioning, so we met on the porch,” Craft recalls. Members of the Slidell North Shore Rotary club brought lunch and drinks. “They were flooded over in St. Tammany Parish, but they came and helped us.”
Craft, a former teacher who is currently serving his second two-year term as president of the St. Bernard Parish School Board, helped secure FEMA funds to build eight new schools, all of which were up and running by August 2008.
He found time to do all this while rebuilding the tan brick home where he and Carolon, his wife of 46 years, have lived since 1966. “I had water up to the ceiling of my house,” he says. The couple lived in a FEMA trailer before relocating to Slidell; the formaldehyde fumes in the trailer made it difficult to breathe. Craft now commutes 60 miles every day to help rebuild his parish.
“I’m not a recliner man,” he says in a stand-up Dixie drawl. “My wife says, ‘You’re busy saving the world; now why don’t you put this light bulb in the bathroom?’ But we’re still struggling to come back.”
The community has received donations from Rotary clubs in Louisiana, California, Ohio, Florida, and South Carolina. The Boca Raton club delivered US$20,000 worth of medical supplies to the parish. A club in Tokyo sent two Rotarians with a $17,000 donation for the school system. At District 6840’s (New Orleans) conference in April, Craft was honored with the RI Service Above Self award – the highest honor a Rotarian can receive.
“At the time of Katrina, there were zero teachers and no buildings,” Craft says. “It looked bleak. Now we have 4,300 students with eight schools back. Things are not like they were, but we are making progress. There’s one common thread with the people I talk to: They want to come home.”