43
Volunteers build tables to help Katrina victims furnish homes
The idea for the tables originated with a church youth group.
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — It was the sight from the 17th Avenue Bridge in New Orleans that got to Jim Moose.
He and his wife, Sherry, were in the Crescent City in July to deliver 100 handmade kitchen tables to families who were finally getting into rebuilt homes after losing everything to Hurricane Katrina.
He recalls that although he expected to see devastation, the size of it stunned him.
“It’s 40 miles wide and 15 miles long. Put a house every 50 feet and add 8 feet of water for two weeks,” he said. “What the flood didn’t get, the black mold did.”
The devastation spurred him to come back here and work even harder to try to get enough donations and volunteers to produce the oak tables so that as many families as possible will have a place to sit down and share meals in their new homes.
The idea to send kitchen tables to the Gulf Coast originated from the reports from youth in Moose’s church, New Wilmington Presbyterian, who went on a mission trip to New Orleans.
They recounted that one hurricane victim who just moved into a rebuilt home with every stick of furniture donated cried with happiness when she sat at her own dining room table for the first time in three years.
“It wrecked me,” said Moose, a longtime furniture builder, woodworking teacher and owner of Moosewood Furniture who now works out of his workshop on West Washington Street in Union Township.
He had an idea: make hundreds, or thousands, of kitchen tables that could be collapsed and sent to New Orleans.
But the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the idea was crazy and way too complicated.
Then, “like someone hit me with a two-by-four,” as he walked to his workshop one morning the words of the biblical prophet Malachi in Malachi 3:10 came to him: “Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it.”
Moose typed out a project proposal and showed it to the head presbyter in his church. He then presented it at the Mercer/Lawrence Presbytery, which includes representatives of all Presbyterian churches in the two counties.
The next day, Harry Riethmiler of Riethmiller Lumber in New Wilmington called him and offered to help by using his production equipment to doing preparatory work on the wood.
His offer greatly simplified the project, Moose said, allowing the pieces for the table to be sent out in kits to be finished in home workshops.
Since the project started in February, 100 volunteers — with an average age of 74 — have built and finished 100 tables that were shipped in July by PI&I Trucking in Masury, which provided the trucks.
Seventy-five benches were sent in August along with 150 wooden folding chairs. A variety of churches and private contributors have donated more than $15,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind services. Catholic Charities is distributing the tables in New Orleans through a cooperative effort of many volunteer organizations there called NODRUP in order to make sure they go to those in most need.
Moose said that poorest residents are the last to get into their homes and that the situation is difficult.
The Red Cross and the Salvation Army have both now pulled out of New Orleans because they have exhausted their budgets. As a result, 90 percent of the recovery effort is now being done by church-based organizations and Habitat for Humanity.
He said that although the middle class has largely recovered from the hurricane, the large population of low-income and retired residents are slower to get back into their homes.
A $28,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency allotment for each destroyed house gives them enough to buy materials to restore the house and buy appliances. Many church-based organizations and Habitat for Humanity provide volunteers and licensed contractors for the rebuilding.
But the allotment is not enough to furnish the house, Moose said.
The group’s goal over the next year is to deliver 1,000 table sets to the Gulf Coast at a cost of $250,000. The project is limited only by funding, Moose said, adding that he also needs more volunteers as well as donations of wooden folding chairs.
He would like to expand the project into the Youngstown area and already has several volunteers there including two Youngstown State University professors.
Though the project is under the auspices of the New Wilmington Presbyterian Church, Moose is exploring the possibility of becoming a nonprofit group or partnering with one to raise money and get foundational support.
Anyone interested is invited to a reorganizational meeting for the project set for 7 p.m. Wednesday at New Wilmington Presbyterian Church, 229 S. Market St., New Wilmington. The church is next to Westminster College.