05-SEP-A-20
DEPARTURE MESSAGE ON MY LAST NIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS JEFFERSON PARISH AS THE TEAM CHANGES OVER AND THE “OLD GUARD” WHO WERE HERE “AB INITIO” PACKS UP,
AND I MAKE MY LAST VISIT TO THE MCCU AND FORWARD THE GUARDSMAN’S POEM “VOLUNTEER ANGELS”
AND FORWARD THE PHOTOGRAPH OF GOVERNOR EHRLICH’S HANDSHAKE SENDOFF WHEN I DEPARTED FROM MARTIN STATE AIR BASE TO WHICH I WILL RETURN TOMORROW
September 17, 2005
You have been patient with me in the long process of downloading the photojournalism from the pathway of Katrina through the lives of the people who had lived in Jefferson Parish. As they are now slowly returning to survey what they might be able to do with the wreckage of their lives that had been left behind in an abrupt departure, it may be time for me to do the same.
At some time undisclosed to me, I may be escorted after curfew to and boarding a C-130 for return to Maryland. The in-flight self-serve dinner service is only slightly better than the movie, and that is the best thing I have said in the past two weeks about an MRE!
Power, plumbing, hot water and even some public services will be further restored--like phones and eventually schools during the coming weeks, and even the US Post Office will open here by October. A few local practitioners are returning and are concerned that it might be rather hard to compete with freebie services and medicines for which the patient population here has seemed very grateful. I hope we may have improved their standard of care when they were rather short on hope, and that this experience has brought the plight of their pre-storm lives to light fpr the concern of those resources now amassing to address them.
Through the request of several of you who wanted to know and perhaps understand better the plight of the people affected by the storm and a social situation that left little margin even before it, I hope that this field report from what are left of storm-ravaged and people-plundered grass roots where real people lived--and not differently coped with day to day than my African, Asian, Oceana, Caribbean and Latin friends who share the common problems of poverty and despair. These are American Refugees--who look a lot like the common citizenry of the bottom billion-of the "Southern World--fellow travelers on this disturbed and uneven planet.
One of my "Subculture Giant" patients today invited me back to break gumbo with her and her extended family, which includes her displaced neighbors when they get back toward what they consider a baseline normalcy. Before then, I will be working in many areas of the world where the suffering is at least as severe, minus a few thousand calories each day, and without the massing of huge support now being marshaled, however tardy and for whatever reasons of its delayed arrival. I am happy to have been among the earliest of the responders and will cherish the recollection of this unusual experience among my usually international medical missions.
Let's compare notes and pictures among the experiences since the Labor day weekend mobilization and deployment to Louisiana and the earlier this year Missions to Mindanao, Haiti, Sudan, Eritrea and many more still to come!
Cheers!
GWG
From Arundel, Howard, Allegany
And Prince George's - Mary's land by the sea
Came Volunteer Angels in the storm's wake
To Murerro, Gretna by Ponchartrain's Lake
Northwest by west of New Orleans came they
With doctors, nurses; their skills to parlay
And lend succor; give hope; care; and a hand
To the storm's survivors upon dry land
As Guardsmen handed out water, food, ice
They battled disease, hunger, heat and ice
For away from the media's eyes and ears.
- 10 Sep 2005
SGT Daniel W. Hammersley
A-Company 2nd Battalion, 153rd Infantry
Arkansas Army National Guard.