Cold weather arrives
2008 World AIDS Day
Canine Christmas
Nearly 50 from campus work in New Orleans
Monday, March 19, 2007
DAYTON — Rather than tans, Julie Salomone and Andrew Formentini came back from spring break with new perspectives on life.
"You feel really good about yourself," Formentini, 20, of Chicago said of the week he and 46 other University of Dayton students spent helping to rebuild New Orleans.
Extras
On Sunday, after a 14-hour return bus ride, the groggy group was back on campus, the moldy walls of a senior citizens home, still uninhabitable 17 months after Hurricane Katrina, only a memory.
The group, from UD's Campus Ministry Center for Social Concern, left behind 16 Dumpsters full of water-damaged carpet, drywall and other building refuse ripped out of St. Martin de Porres Manor.
The students "stripped to the studs" two-and-a-half floors of the building, said Salomone, 20, of Las Vegas.
Unfortunately, it was just one building in a sea of storm-damaged structures the students left behind.
"I expected it to be more cleaned up," Salomone said. "It's been a very slow process."
Feelings of frustration were fed by speakers who enlightened them on the city's plight due to corruption and mismanagement of relief efforts.
"After 17 long and painful months, the future of New Orleans is more radically uncertain than that of any great American city," Michael A. Cowan, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said in a discussion paper prepared for the students.
"There's so much down there to do," said Barbara Finkbeiner, 55, of Beavercreek, the UD staff group leader.
Students also expressed frustration at the lack of interaction they had with local residents during their stay, in part due to security concerns in some of the affected neighborhoods.
Ashleigh Kussman recalled one great- grandmother, a 3-year-old granddaughter on her knee, responding to dressers delivered to her home.
"Seeing our faces, seeing the volunteers, really gave her hope," said Kussman, 20, of Kettering.
Although unrested and untanned, the students said they were glad they'd spent their break stripping moldy walls and floors, learning more about the city's problems and sleeping on air mattresses in senior-citizen apartments.
"You don't realize until you're done with it," Formentini said. "We know someone's going to finish."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2261 or lbudd@DaytonDailyNews.com.
