Break from tradition
CMU group helps victims of hurricane.

A group of Fayette college students broke ranks with the hordes of spring breakers racing to sunny Acapulco and instead traveled to Gulfport, Miss., to spend their break cleaning and restoring homes ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Chris Buckman, 26, had the idea for the service-oriented spring break after visiting the area over Thanksgiving break and seeing firsthand how much work there was left to be done.

Buckman, director of student activities at Central Methodist University, invited every student on campus to come along, and 21 signed up.

"We were the smallest school with the largest number of people," he said of the groups that worked last week with Gateway United Methodist Church in Gulfport.

They slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the church and spent five days cleaning up and repairing three homes, Buckman said.

The most shocking thing Ricky Smith saw was a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the coast that had been gutted by the storm. Only its metal frame was left standing.

Students spent a day and a half re-roofing one home, gutting another of damaged sheet rock, carpets and insulation, and clearing a yard of debris.

"I didn’t go down expecting much," Smith, 20, said of the destruction. "It’s been seven months since it happened, but it looked like it happened the day before."

Student Government President Kristofferson Culmer, 28, is from the Bahamas and said he has weathered hurricanes before. Two years ago, the Caribbean islands were hit by a hurricane, and Culmer said life there is just getting back to normal.

The damage he saw in Gulfport is "incomparable," he said. "They won’t be anywhere back to normal for years."

The students said it looked as if people were returning to the area. The evidence, they said, was in the yard signs, "Together We’ll Rebuild," and the "help wanted" signs at every restaurant they passed in Gulfport.

Katrina’s aftermath has drawn other volunteers to the area, Smith said. "You see vans like this everywhere," he said, describing the two 10-person vans the group rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car Inc. "Every time we stopped and ate, somebody told us, ‘You guys are making a difference.’ "

Buckman said that going to the beach for spring break is fun but that helping people is more rewarding. He said the group stopped for a couple of days in New Orleans to see the city and have some fun, too.

The Student Government Association allocated $5,000 for the trip, which was estimated to cost $10,000 to $12,000. The campus Wesley Foundation donated $1,500. Each student paid an additional $200.

While the students were gone, tornadoes tore through Howard County on March 12.

"My friend’s farm was completely destroyed," Culmer said. "It’s time to come back and work here."

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Reach Annie Nelson at (573) 815-1731 or anelson@tribmail.com.

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