Camp Second Helpin PT4 Down but not Out…

Down but not Out…



During our short time on the lot in Bayside Park we made many good connections. One that I will remember for the rest of my life was Charles Clements. Everyone called him “Cappie” because he had once been a longtime Captain of his own shrimp boat. Later in life he owned a marine repair shop that he lost during Katrina, but he was still known by everyone as Cappie. You can read his amazing survival story in the book “Hell and High Water”. Cappie was 71 at the time and he let Momma the kids and I park our camper beside his FEMA trailer between Waveland and Bayside Park. Monkey came along with us and he and I both cleared out the Bijou of debris behind his house, cleared his land, repaired his fence, and built a new Dock behind his destroyed house.


While on Cappie’s land working, my mind kept moving forward on how to re-open our camp. We had often talked in the evenings of becoming a full-fledged community center and we hoped to leave it to the citizens of Hancock County. We had acquired a professional computer operated movie projector and I received permission from the Fox entertainment group to do movies as long as the movies & concessions were free. Throughout my correspondence I told them that I had approached others like MGM and DreamWorks with no success. So with a wink and a nod I was told that as long as every aspect of the movie nights were donated, no money was passed between hands, and we were having friends over for the evening no one should have a problem. As long as it was stated like that, (no big corporation would want the bad publicity from busting a volunteer group doing humanitarian work after something as big as Katrina). I had been networking with citizens and finally got to the commander of the American Legion post on Coleman Av.. Wooo Hooo we were going to soon be back in business.


Many Thanks to Al Showers, Mike Kommersmith, WLOX and Raycom media for helping us to retrive the video. We Love you Waveland!


It was early in February of 2006 when we saw the city block sized lot offered to us. Brothers & Sisters it was bad twisted metal, broken glass, trash & storm debris… Some visiting volunteers from Emergency Communities (Made with Love Café) went with us and we saw something beautiful beyond the devastation we were looking at. Within days we took possession of the lot and began to clean up. Over the next month we totally removed the waste to the side of the road with help of some citizens and a few Rainbow volunteers (5 Rainbow). Waste Management told me that we had pulled 32 tons out to the side of the road. Let me tell you we had the cleanest lot beach side of the railroad tracks. Momma started a nightly tradition in the evenings of going out to the beach at night during low tide and removing debris from the beach. Everyone in camp joined in and before long we had the beach (and 200 yards out into the gulf totally cleaned. Thanks to Momma that summer we had the only beach that was opened and used by the public.

Although we were in cleanup mode we had many visitors coming by for meals and supplies. (we were a POD point of distribution as well).





In those days the prison road crews were cleaning the roadsides. They were all trustees of course and no real danger to the public. But they were supposed to go back to the prison at lunchtime because at that time they had been working 7 hours. One day a couple of guards approached me and said “The inmates would rather keep on working rather that go back to lock up” They wanted to know if we would feed them lunch. I said “well hell yes”! The Guard told me that they had been turned away from the other 2 Christian kitchens because they didn’t want the inmates on their lots. That was hard for me to wrap my mind around, not feeding someone that was volunteering to do even more work than was required of them. In those first days they helped so much after they had lunch that we were able to open up days ahead of schedule. We continued to take care of them come mealtime till we closed our doors. I have noted that persons with bad judgment are most insistent that we do what they think best. And to quote Woodrow Wilson “One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”

That Number is no longer in use people so don’t call to donate money. As well if you want to donate to Katrina relief donate to Emergency Communities. http://www.neo3d.com/ec/
Some people are still receiving donations for the New Waveland Cafe' and are no longer there so be smart!