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Kennebunkport
Kennebunkport couple starts relief fund for Pass Christian
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Hurricane Katrina has come ashore for one local couple in Kennebunkport.
Christopher and Lois Audley lost their winter home along the Gulf Coast in Pass Christian, Miss., but more importantly, they are still searching for family and friends in New Orleans and Pass Christian.
They have received word that one friend who clung to a tree for 5½ hours after being blown out of his home by the 41-foot storm surge did not survive the hurricane.
Christopher Audley has strong ties to Pass Christian and New Orleans. My ancestors are buried in St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, New Orleans, and my mother spent her childhood summers in Pass Christian at her grandmother’s house,” said Chris Audley. “My parents retired to Pass Christian and are buried there. Pass Christian and its two neighboring towns of Waveland, Miss., and Bay St. Louis, Miss., are basically being ignored by the media.”
The eye of the hurricane directly passed over these communities obliterating them.
“Our neighbor in the Pass, a Mississippi Power linesman who has been working long days everyday, told us that what we were seeing on television doesn’t even begin to compare with the devastation there,” Chris Audley said.
Pass Christian is a community of approximately 8,000. They have lost their town hall, police station, fire department, highway equipment, post office, library, seven of eight schools including the brand new high school, churches, banks and retail community.
The Audleys propose to raise funds specifically to help the citizens of Pass Christian, Miss., at a grassroots level where every dollar would get to where it was most needed in the community.
“We would like the people of our communities here to adopt Pass Christian and help the citizens there rebuild their lives,” Lois Audley said. “We feel that by raising money in this manner, it will be possible to direct every cent of every dollar to the appropriate need. This will also enable us to report back to this community exactly what their generous donations had achieved. We feel enormously loved and supported by the people of this community who have reached out to us via phone calls, emails, cards, flowers and baked goods. Those gestures have sustained us in the last two weeks We want the people of Pass Christian to feel that same kind of love and support.”
Clothes drive
Katie Maiuccoro, a summer resident from New York state, and Brandy Hynes of the Wayfarer Restaurant are coordinating a clothing and goods drive for the Rev. M. L. Agnew, to benefit the members of the churches in Louisiana. Maiuccoro and her husband, John, wanted to help the citizens of Mississippi.
After meeting with Lois Audley, Katie and her husband will sponsor a clothing and goods drive from their corporate headquarters in New York for the community of Pass Christian.
“Trinity Episcopal Church and St. Paul’s Catholic Church will receive the truckload of goods in the Pass,” Lois Audley said. “The need is so overwhelming, you can’t just stop at one place. You need to keep moving and help as many people as you can,” Maiuccoro said. “I would like to encourage every community in southern Maine and York County to adopt and support a community in Mississippi or a segment of a community such as the elderly, children or the disabled.”
Father Dennis Carver, Pastor of St. Paul’s Church in Pass Christian said that the devastation was overwhelming and he has particular concern for the young and the elderly. “Children might not have parents or family who survived this horrific catastrophe,” Carver said. “We are so grateful for the generosity of this community in reaching out to the citizens of Pass Christian,” said Lois Audley. “In a world where there is so much heartache and misery, it is nice to know that there are so many people who truly care. A friend wrote me this week and said her heart ached for the loss of our friend, our home and our town in Mississippi. But she so eloquently reminded me that the only thing left is a future filled with good things. How right she is.”
This page has been printed from the following URL:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/yorkstar/09152005/news/62978.htm
9-20-2005