Sun January 8, 2006
Kindness of strangers follows nature's wrath
By Tom Lindley
The Oklahoman
The first baby boomers are turning 60, but that's not who is taking center stage this year, not with Oklahoma burning, California sliding into the Pacific and New Orleans still below sea level.
Before Mother Nature is done, all of us will know someone who is a part of the evacuation generation, the fastest-growing segment of the population.
I guess that makes Carlos Ginn, who evacuated from Slidell, La., and Hurricane Katrina four months ago, a drop in the bucket.
I guess it also makes him very lucky because the real question in America in 2006 is will we provide shelter from the storm or will we ignore the misery of others, now that there seems to be so much misery to go around.
In Louisiana, I have seen it go both ways.
You can spend three times what it normally costs to put the roof back on your house, or you can get lucky and find a roofer who still charges what he charged before.
You can read stories about the kindness of strangers in the darkest hours of the storm, who risk their lives to save another. Or you can read stories about public officials who only seem to care about negotiating get-rich-quick deals for themselves and their relatives.
You can cry over how many of the elderly chose to remain in the only home they had ever known and died in the flood. Or you can get angry at the inability of various factions to work together to rebuild New Orleans in a way that will prevent future deaths.
Either way, Ginn is lucky because he learned firsthand that Oklahomans generally do the right thing, no matter what it takes.
It's well documented that the state doesn't have a history of catching much of a break from the weather, but with wildfires seemingly raging all around him, there was Gov. Brad Henry on national television the other night expressing empathy for mud-slide victims in California and relatives of trapped coal miners in West Virginia.
A few months ago, it was much like that at the headquarters of ClimateMaster, an Oklahoma City manufacturer of water-source heat pumps, when company President Dan Ellis watched the tragedy unfold from afar and decided he wanted to help.
That set company Human Resources Director Chris Chavez in motion to hire any qualified Katrina evacuee who wanted work, while employees at the plant pulled together to see if anyone they knew needed help.
One employee drove to New Orleans and came back with 10 people who for a while slept on the floor of his house.
Other employees took up a collection and delivered groceries and gift cards to evacuees.
The company dipped into its relief fund to provide housing, transportation and jobs.
To expedite the process, Chavez tracked down two evacuees and interviewed them at a restaurant on his way home from work. They were practically hired on the spot.
Ginn was hired while his family waited in the van on the company parking lot.
At ClimateMaster, you could say unconventional times call for humanitarian efforts.
"We wanted to take a negative event and make something positive of it," Chavez said of the hiring program, which was dubbed "Fresh Start."
Today, five hurricane evacuees are employed at the plant, including Ginn, who performs a myriad of duties on the assembly line.
Ginn fled Slidell with his wife, children and grandchild the day before Katrina, thinking he could spend a few days with relatives in Oklahoma and then return home.
Today, the home he had isn't even a candidate for one of those mold-remediation miracles that keep getting advertised on the radio in New Orleans. It took 4½ feet of water from the storm surge, and Ginn isn't going back.
"The only thing I could save were some pictures on the wall," he said. "Everything else is gone."
But the hurricane he thought had blown away life as he knew it actually did him a favor because Oklahoma and ClimateMaster, which is owned by LSB Industries of Oklahoma City, have treated him just like he was family.
"I've got a lot to learn about Oklahoma, but the one thing I know that makes me happy is to see my wife smile," he said. "She's happy again."
That is to say Ginn is here to stay.
"I can get everything I want right here," he said. "I even found a seafood place."
Monday night, he got another taste of home when he and other New Orleans transplants were treated to a Hornets game at the Ford Center, where he got to meet the Hornets' owner, whose team is faring pretty well as evacuees, too, in the won-lost column.
I guess Mother Nature doesn't always have the final say.
Write me: P.O. Box 25125, Oklahoma City, OK 73125 Fax me: 475-3183
Call me: (405) 936-0175 E-mail me: tlindley@cox.net
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