Episcopal Relief and Development connections between New Orleans and Georgia brings furniture home

According to her daughter, Kristen, Geraldine Vallery “was goin’ everywhere” to find help in relocating to another home in New Orleans. The family had lived in New Orleans East, but evacuated to Marietta Georgia after Hurricane Katrina devastated their home.  Later, they returned to a FEMA trailer Recently, Miss Vallery, her daughter and two grandchildren decided to move to a rebuilt house in Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans.

The family needed help to purchase appliances and get furniture out of storage in Marietta. Case manager Matthew Holt, from the Trinity Counseling Center of the Office of Disaster Response (ODR) of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, went to work to help the family.

Holt originally thought he would just get a truck and get the furniture himself. But a deacon suggested that he check if a volunteer group was scheduled to come to New Orleans from Georgia and arrange the move with them. After calls to the ODR volunteer coordinators, Holt was connected to Rev. Jim Nixon, rector at St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church, Marietta, who was scheduled to bring a group to New Orleans in late July. On an overcast Thursday morning, tables, chairs, couches and more filled the rebuilt home.

Pontchartrain Park is in the Gentilly District of Orleans Parish. It was one of the first areas in New Orleans designed to provide home ownership to middle and upper income African Americans.  Flood waters resulting from Hurricane Katrina inundated the entire neighborhood.  As Anthony Johnson, ODR Director of Case Management, explained, many of the early residents are elderly and chose not to rebuild.

Pontchartrain Park was also in the news in early 2007 when the southern portion of the February North America winter storm produced a tornado which hit the subdivision. Just two houses down from Miss Vallery’s new home, a woman was killed in her FEMA trailer. Her house has since been demolished, but tornado damage in the neighborhood is still visible. Miss Kristi hopes that others will rebuild in the neighborhood.

More information about Pontchartrain Park Neighborhood, pre-Katrina, is available at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

The Trinity Counseling Center is one of four locations delivering case management services for Katrina Aid Today consortium partner, Episcopal Relief and Development, administered through the ODR. The other three in the city of New Orleans are St. Paul Homecoming Center, St. Luke Homecoming Center, and the Urban Ministry Center.