2025 marked the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My brother Tom sent a small blurb from the Homer News looking back at the local coverage from that time—coverage that featured my dad. He was a chaplain who’d volunteered with the Red Cross and gone down after the storm to help.
Helping. That’s kind of his thing.
I remember talking to him when he came back from New Orleans. He hadn’t slept much. He’d been stationed in a massive sports arena turned shelter—hundreds of cots, hundreds of people, all of them carrying some version of loss: homes, belongings, livelihoods, pets. Some had lost so, so much more.
It was loud all night. Hot. Smelly. But that’s not why he couldn’t sleep. There was too much to do. So many people in need—victims, first responders, other volunteers running on fumes and determination.
If there’s work to do, my dad does it.
Once he built parallel bars for a friend of mine who needed them for at-home physical therapy after a neurological diagnosis—and couldn’t afford them. He measured, researched, designed, and custom-built them. Then he and my mom drove to Los Angeles to deliver them. He’d never met her, but she needed help. He could help. So. Done.
There were the hitchhikers he picked up over the years—occasionally bringing them home for a meal, sometimes for a night, once for six months so Stan could get back on his feet.
There was a WWII veteran—dying in the hospital where he chaplain’d—she wanted to ride on a motorcycle again. My dad found someone with a bike and a sidecar. Of course he did.
And then—when my brother lost his wife, with three boys still at home—he and Mom moved from California to Homer, Alaska. They bought a bed-and-breakfast a short walk, down a dirt path, from the boys’ school.
The kind of path you don’t think much about until it becomes the path to comfort and unconditional love. Devion, Camron, and Collin walked it almost every day toward grandparents who were now, very decisively, there.
For as long as I can remember and to this day, no matter what we’re talking about, Dad will say, “So what’s going on? Do you need prayer for anything?” Almost no matter what I say, he answers, “Well, let’s pray about it,” and reaches out his hands to take mine.
It helps.
My parents now live in a retirement community whose residents range from independent to memory care. There is no shortage of people who need helping. I walked in the other day and found Mom and Dad praying for another resident.
Still at it.
Leave a Reply