Spring Breaking

By Lott Hill ('96, '00) / Photography by Alan Baker ('06), Na'am Hayes ('07), and Emily Rehm ('08).

Demolishing crumbling walls. Chopping down broken trees. Shoveling rancid muck from rotting floors. Hauling piles of debris. Pulling insulation from ruined walls and attics. Raking decomposing trash. Prying and pulling rusted nails.

Does that sound like a spring-break vacation?

Probably not. But this spring, some of Columbia’s most promising student leaders decided not to soak up the sun in Cancun, Miami, or anyplace else glamorous and relaxing. Instead, they opted to participate in Columbia’s first Alternative Spring Break program in Waveland, Mississippi, one of the communities hit hardest by hurricane Katrina. On March 18, 28 students and four staff members piled into five rented vans and drove 1,000 miles to volunteer their time, strength, and creative energy to help this Gulf Coast community. It was a trip that would change our lives and how we think about ourselves.

We’d seen the pictures, watched the news, and read the stories of Katrina’s devastation. We thought we were prepared for what we would see, but we were astounded by the extent of the destruction and how much help is still needed, all these months after the storm. “I saw firsthand that the media doesn’t portray everything,” notes freshman music business management major Emily Rehm. “Katrina may be out of the news now, but that doesn’t mean her impact is over.”

Everywhere we went, trees were bent, twisted, and gnarled. In some spots, entire swaths of trees were blown into piles, their trunks crisscrossed like giant pickup sticks. Where branches remained, multicolored tatters of shirts, sheets, curtains, dresses, and fabric of all types danced in the Gulf breeze. Roadsides were still lined with the crushed and rusted remains of thousands of cars, and there were boats everywhere: big and small, overturned and listing on broken hulls. Scattered for miles were all the creature comforts of everyday American life. Imagine every piece of furniture, electronic device, appliance, personal treasure, and toy in your home and all your neighbors’ homes—everything—scattered on the ground as far as the eye could see.

Every home was damaged in some way. Some were missing shingles or siding, windows or doors. Many had gaping holes in their roofs and fallen walls; others had been picked up by floodwaters and moved or tipped over. And many—so many more than you might think—were wiped completely clean from their concrete foundations. The flood reached miles inland and touched every house, leaving behind massive water damage and toxic mold. We were told that the storm surge dragged away nearly every structure within a mile of the beach. Waveland was ground zero for hurricane Katrina, and we were stunned by what we saw.

Because response to the tragedy has been less than effective at all levels, organizations like Community Collaborations International, with which we worked, have stepped in to coordinate service-learning alternative breaks for students. These organizations are often effective and efficient at helping people rebuild their homes—and their lives—more quickly and with far less paperwork than many larger, more bureaucratic organizations and other entities.

We worked for six days, and every day brought something different and new, something we had never seen, done, or experienced before. One day might find us demolishing a ruined, seven-room house right down to the frame and foundation; the next, we’d be cataloguing donated children’s books for the library trailer at the local elementary school. Another day we might be clearing debris and rubble from a yard and righting storm-toppled gravestones in a cemetery, or spending the day in the mess tent helping to provide the volunteers (and some residents) with hot meals. We knocked down walls and shoveled seven-month-old muck. We carried rotted furniture and cleared masses of dead trees. We did data entry and installed hardware and software. We hung drywall and painted siding. We dug
holes and put up tarps. We built sheds and removed tons and tons and tons of the detritus hurricane Katrina made of people’s lives. 

People who live in the community worked along side us, sharing their stories and whenever possible, feeding us. They barbequed on makeshift grills and made us potato salad; they brought hamburgers and baked beans, or pizzas and coolers of pop, and did everything they could to make sure we knew they appreciated us. One day, as we worked along the side of a gravel road that was lined with huge piles of trash waiting to be collected by the Army Corps of Engineers, a local man leaned his elbows on the bed of his pickup truck. He looked me in the eye and said, simply, “You got no idea what you’re doing here. You’re saving us. Nobody’s done anything for us. Not FEMA, not the government, and sure as hell not the insurance. It’s the volunteers that have saved our lives.”

I never once heard anyone say, “I can’t” or, “I won’t” that week, even though some of us had never touched a sledgehammer or held a crowbar, and most of us had never used either one. Few of us had ever seen what’s on the inside of a wall, behind the drywall and insulation, but there we were swinging sledgehammers, leaning on crowbars, knocking down walls, and clearing the way for rebuilding. We were doing things we would never encounter in the studio or classroom, things most of us never imagined we’d have any reason to do.

But the studio or classroom isn’t the only place where discoveries happen. We applied the same creativity and determination to this hot, dirty, exhausting labor that we apply to our majors or life passions. Each moment was a discovery, and as we witnessed this community’s sense of survival and perseverance, we found we were all up to the challenge of helping by learning how to do things we’d never done before. These small daily triumphs gave us an unexpected sense of pride and accomplishment. They helped us sleep through windy nights in tattered World War II-era tents and roll out of uncomfortable cots in the 6:00 a.m. chill. The appreciation shown by people who have lost nearly everything gave us the strength to work all day, every day, and kept us upbeat and determined as we witnessed the severity of the storm damage. These experiences made us understand that no matter what we were faced with, we could figure it out together.

Jacob Holland, a junior majoring in performing arts management, reflects, “It brought out the best in me by me being able to pick up a sledgehammer and bust down a wall, and that was helping someone. The good that you’re doing for people really is amazing, and you really just find out who you are.” Junior broadcast journalism major Akisha Lockhard notes, “It floored me, it humbled me. I know that this experience . . . it has made me into a different person, a better person.”

We returned to Chicago a little bit tired and much more aware of what we can do and who we are as citizens in the world. We all have a better understanding of our own individuality, as well as our responsibility as individuals. We’d been back a few days when the mayor of Waveland, Tommy Longo, called Columbia Chronicle reporter Alan Baker and left a voice-mail message: “Your people have been very, very good to us, and we’re very blessed to have crossed paths with the people of Columbia. God bless you guys. Thank you.”

Lott Hill earned a B.A. in 1996 and an M.F.A. in 2000 in writing at Columbia, where he is now the assistant director for civic engagement of the Center for Teaching Excellence.  He is a writer who also teaches in the Fiction Writing Department and New Millennium Studies: The First Year Seminar.

Columbia College Chicago's Alternative Spring Break was faciliated by Community Collaborations International.