Please Read This:

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done for a job?

Emotionally, it may have been my phone call today.

One of our clients is a really interesting community development organization that establishes public and private partnerships, funds neighborhood-based initiatives, strives to sway publish policy, and generally works to revitalize low-income neighborhoods. Since last year’s hurricane season, they’ve also worked extensively rebuilding the Gulf.

Part of my job is to find interesting angles of their work that we can highlight in an effort to get the organization some media coverage. One such angle was their work with the Mennonites, who they brought to the Gulf to rebuild houses. One house belonged to a 40-something-year-old woman, her husband, and her seven kids – many of whom have “special needs.”

Today, we got a request from a freelancer who was looking to feature women who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina in an upcoming article. She wanted to talk about how they rebuilt their lives – and, since our client was involved in the rebuilding of her home, I thought this might be a perfect opportunity.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone within our client’s organization that could help answer some of the more detailed questions. So instead, I called the woman herself.

Now THAT was tough.

Karen Rosser, her best friend/husband, and their nine children – four of whom are adopted, the rest are foster children who they hope to adopted soon – lived pleasantly in her grandparent’s house for years. It’s a modest brick house just behind the Port of Iberia, and it was spared by Katrina.

Rita, however, had other plans. The hurricane completely destroyed the home, displacing the family for who knows how long. Karen struggled endlessly, fighting constantly to keep all of her children, finding hospice in her boss’s home. They didn’t know what they were going to do. Live in the FEMA trailer? That wasn’t a long-term solution. Look for new houses? She started sobbing on the phone just thinking about how hard it was to consider giving up the sentimental value of her family home.

“We had nothing, no where, and no idea of what was going to happen.”

That’s when someone from church said she could help Karen and her family. “I just starting crying, asking over and over again – ‘You mean you can really help me?’”

This woman was involved with the Southern Mutual Group, who organizes volunteers from the across the country to come to the Gulf and rebuild homes. Soon after, Karen had people from Canada, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, and many more come to rebuild – piece by piece – her family’s home. The Mennonites were one such group. “They did the closets,” she said, “but everybody did their piece. I’m so grateful to all of them, because each group did a little work that brought us a little bit closer to having a home again.” Before the storm, they had put new wood floors in and bought new furniture for the boys’ bedroom. After the storm, with the help of these people from all over, they built a new kitchen and revamped the girls’ room. “We even had kids who decided to come help us instead of go one spring break. I mean, we even had 15-, 16-year-old kids workin’ on the house.”

She was so grateful that she's now volunteering herself to rebuild homes, and she donates anything she doesn't need herself to other victims - from hammers and nails to spare doors and other goods.

“Everyone was so nice, so wonderful, so helpful,” she said over and over. She was so grateful, so happy there were good people in this world. “At Christmas,” she paused – and I feared the phone was disconnected. But a moment later, she continued – her voice broken by sobbing tears. “At Christmas the sixth grade at the kids’ school – they attend a Christian school – they sixth grade came together and bought Christmas gifts for all my kids.” Her tears were evoking an inexplainable saddness in my own heart… I was about to start crying with her. “They came over, too” and her voice grew stronger, “and sang Christmas carols and did that sort of thing. They were so good.”

What do you say to a story like this? Here I was in my expensive clothes with a new pair of old Prada sandals, living in the heart of Cambridge with my dog and hardly a care in the world... and there she was, a true survivor of Hurricaine Rita.

I heard her husband ask in the background, “Who are you telling our life story to?”

“I’m doin’ an interview,” she said so proudly. “We’re gonna be on Oprah.”

I laughed a little bit. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try!”

“Oh I know, and thank you!”

The thing is, Karen was so hopeful. She talked about her children, about the 2- and 9-year-olds who suffer daily from intense special needs, about her home that’s still missing doors and cabinet covers and flooring, and she was so full of hope. “God has blessed us by keeping this family together and introducing us to so many good people who helped rebuild this house,” she said, “and we’ll just take whatever’s to come next.”

Every once in awhile during our conversation she had to stop to manage the children, who I could hear playing in the background. She sounded like such a good mom, so loving.

She’s still in the midst of a battle. In that area, hurricane insurance apparently didn’t cover most of the damage, since the houses were technically ruined in large part due to floods. Now, Karen must raise her home six feet in order to not be dropped from her insurance… but doing so wont bring the insurance cost down at all. Raising her house is particularly challenging not only because it’s brick, but also because she has a son who’s special needs means he operates at the level of a three-year-old; how is she to ensure that he won’t fall off and seriously hurt himself?

“Please, Catherine,” she asked, crying again, “share my story. It’s a story of hope and of good people, and we don’t see enough of that.” She promised me the DVD of her husband approaching the house by boat after Rita struck, exploring the remnants and describing – in detail – the disgusting aromas that took over her beloved home.

And I thought about how our client would never be mentioned, meaning it’s something that I can’t do during business hours – because we have no one to bill it to.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

Somebody has to be interested in speaking with a woman who gives extremely compelling interviews with video footage to match, and has a story of hope for the hurricane that is too often overlooked.