I don't have access to many good examples personally, so I'm always lamenting the way our young behave. My kids are still fairly young, so I have hope. But, hearing about your son and seeing fine examples like that young pilot and knowing of others is very encouraging. This country produces greatness. It produces bad stuff too, but the good ones are worth it all, aren't they?
It is worth it -- my oldest daughter and her husband are in the Navy, my son is a grad student teaching English Comp, and my youngest is a Journalism student. Both kids are at The University of Oklahoma and I see a lot of really neat kids that are their friends all the time.
We had two OU football players last year risk their lives to save some people who had an accident on I-35 and their vehicle burst into flames. Those are the ones you don't hear a lot about.
People are continuing to stream into Alexandria and Pineville today. See this link:
http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/NEWS01/508310324/1002
You can tell who the "refugees" (this what they call themselves now, not "evacuees") are because, for one thing, they have much better driving etiquette than the "me-first" Rapides Parish locals, who tend to operate their pick-ups as if they're mobile middle fingers.
When it was announced that the SuperDome refugees were being redirected to the Houston AstroDome, a collective sigh of relief was breathed throughout Alexandria.
In the beginning, it may have seemed like a vacation to some of the people who headed North, but enough time has passed that the novelty has worn off and reality has set in. The families who originally checked into the LaQuinta and went out to dinner at Applebee's are now camped in shelters and standing in line to use the coin laundries. Nobody's crowing any more about tourism dollars bringing a boost to the local economy, because things are about to take a nosedive in terms of the bigger picture.
The refugees won't be going home any time soon. Except for a few stubborn fools who refused to stay safely put and tried to return to their submerged homes, these families have nowhere to go. They're going to have to find jobs and apartments here whether they want to or not, which is going to drastically alter the dynamics of Alexandria's labor and housing markets. There are indeed companies relocating to this area bringing hundreds of jobs, but unfortunately no one will be hired to fill those positions until sometime in 2006. Meanwhile, the low-income families who were on welfare and food stamps in their home parishes will be jamming the hallways at the Office of Family Support, LA Works (the unemployment office) and (child) Support Enforcement Services to file changes of address and related paperwork. Alongside them will be the newly impoverished refugees who will be filing for assistance for the first time because they're out of money and food, have no jobs to return to, and no way of retrieving monthly checks that may have been sent to them by mail at their former home addresses. This unanticipated crush will undoubtedly create a domino effect that will likely prevent our own local residents from gaining access to their already-overloaded caseworkers. Competition for jobs and housing will drive wages down and rents up, and that will also hurt the local residents, many of whom are minimum wage earners to begin with (yes, there really are people living in the United States who only make $5.15 per hour, and this is the place where it happens in abundance, sigh...).
What I'm afraid of is that, if we don't keep banging the drum about this situation, the relief effort will shift away from the people who need it the most and toward whatever new sensational story grabs the headlines next. Meanwhile, the refugees will continue to languish indefinitely here in poverty, possibly taking their hosts down with them.
We've got to get help to Central Louisiana's refugee community as it continues to mushroom. In later posts, I'll give you more details about specific things you can do which will be a lot more useful to these desperately needy families than just mailing a check to a charity.
Thanks for your interest!