AUSTINTOWN Group plans trip to Louisiana to help town hit by hurricanes

The group is looking for volunteers and donations.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- An aid organization headed by a township woman is going back to Louisiana to help a town that hasn't recovered from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Mission of Love, led by Kathleen Price, will take two tractor-trailers full of materials to Jean Lafitte, La., on Feb. 14. A team of volunteers will fly and drive down to build two houses in the Gulf Coast town, where too little money from insurance companies has left families with nowhere to turn to get their lives back together, Price said.
"They got $1,200 or $1,300 to demolish and rebuild, and for all their belongings," she said.
Price said the insurance companies are saying they don't owe for claims because damage was from floods, not the hurricanes, which hit in August and September.
It won't be the Mission of Love's first trip to the Gulf Coast. The organization sent volunteers to the New Orleans area in September and it was then that they learned of the plight of Jean Lafitte.
The town of about 2,000 people 15 miles from New Orleans, where many work in the shrimp and fishing industries, was devastated. There was no food left, and the aid group distributed supplies and fresh water.
At the invitation of the town's mayor, Price returned in December with money for food for the holidays. She said then that people were still living in tents, or that extended families were crammed into small houses.
February trip
Fifteen people will make the February trip, where they will stay in bunk beds that Mayor Tim Kerner is building in the town's civic center, Price said. Other volunteers are welcome to join them, she said. Volunteers pay their own way.
One volunteer, Jeff Housel of Lordstown, has been on many Mission of Love trips before. He's been to Guatemala, Mexico and a South Dakota Indian reservation, he said.
Housel said the main thing prospective volunteers need to be prepared for is "work. You gotta work," he said.
Housel said that round-trip tickets for the Jean Lafitte trip are $210 and that volunteers will pitch in money for food, and local people will cook for them.
Housel, who owns a mobile home park, said he's a jack-of-all-trades who can do just about anything. But even if a volunteer doesn't have building experience, he said, there will be plenty of work to do.
Price said that on Feb. 10, there will be a dinner to raise funds for the trip. It will be at 6:30 p.m. at First Federated Church, 10786 Mahoning Ave., North Jackson The cost is $15 per person. Jean Lafitte's mayor will be there.
Price also said the drop-off site for construction donations is the Short-Stop Trucking Plaza in Leavittsburg at the routes 5 and 82 bypass.
Mission of Love operates entirely on private donations, Price said.