Vermilion Faith Community of Care

vfcc@cox.net

KAREN KEEVE�S “KATRINA COTTAGE:”
FIRST LOWE�S CLIENT “KATRINA COTTAGE”

First published in "ALIVE!", the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana,
Mr. Robert Harwell, Editor, E-mail: robertharwell@centurytel.net. Used with permission.

The first Lowe’s “Katrina Cottage” ever to be built for a client anywhere, is currently being constructed by all-volunteer crews from all over the United States, and the world, for Ms. Karen Keeve in the heart of Abbeville, the Parish Seat of Vermilion Parish. The project is a collaborative one, involving many organizations and underwritten by funding from six different helping agencies. The skilled carpenters and plumbers are coming primarily from rural, western Massachusetts.

The story begins with Karen, who had inherited the home from her grandmother, Ouida Batiste, who died at age 93, on Halloween, October 31, 2005; just several weeks after Hurricane Rita devastated much of southwestern Louisiana. Karen didn’t know who to turn to for help. Since she did not own the house at the time of the hurricane and since the succession had not been legally filed, Karen did not qualify for any of the government hurricane assistance programs. Judy Herring of Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA), a nonprofit organization based in New Iberia that had been working for rural recovery in south Louisiana for over thirty-five years, took up Karen’s case and advocated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help her acquire a FEMA trailer in which to live, now located on the property immediately adjacent to the construction site.

As it so happened, SMHA had made repairs to Ouida’s house some thirty years earlier, and Lorna Bourg, the Executive Director of SMHA, had been the driving force behind that original project. What a small world! So it was very natural and most appropriate for SMHA to come to Karen’s aid for hurricane recovery these thirty years later. Judy Herring and Rene Simon were supervisors of the process for SMHA and worked with Karen for some six months to help repair her home.