Daisy Guyton’s home was the first Livingston CARES volunteers helped rebuild, 11 years ago, following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This is about how life has changed–and how that help changed her. Read the full story about the 10-year commitment Geneseo made to the area and the impacts of a decade of volunteering in the Scene magazine.
Daisy steps out, Duke darting out with a bark to see who’s coming. The front door, displaying a black wreathe carefully wrapped in gold ribbon, opens to a living room in black and reds.
It’s the same frame, but inside, her home is new. Katrina flooding rose seven feet, wiping away more than 47 years of her family’s life.
“We had to start from scratch. I was 73. Can you imagine that?” says Daisy. “Everything you had accumulated. In a matter of hours, you don’t have anything but what you have on.”
Daisy and her son, Thomas evacuated during Katrina; they came home after.
“I peeked in the window and I just started crying,” she says.
Livingston CARES and other volunteers rebuilt her home: Daisy and her daughter slept there before it was finished.
“There were no sheets, no nothing. But we had a bed,” she laughs. “I didn’t care. We were overjoyed.”
Where would she be without the volunteers? Not here in her home.
Daisy’s husband, a chef, is dead. With her fixed income, she wouldn’t be able to rebuild. Here, she can care for her son, Thomas, who has had a stroke. Her daughter, Shaunda, stays here, too. That would be impossible in senior housing.
“I’m just so thankful,” she says. “This has changed me, a lot.”
In such devastation, you are forced to see things differently, she says, when your life is completely altered. Before the storm, Daisy says, she didn’t think much about those who were down and out.
“You don’t think much because, really, you’re living the good life. Then I found myself in the same line, to get whatever I could to survive,” she says. “I have six coats out in the back shed that I bought for children when I know someone needs them. It really changed me as a person.”
Often she looks around her house, and remembers. She tries not to think about the pain of the storm, but of the care so many showed her and others.
Then there’s the fridge.
A volunteer told Daisy a member of her congregation heard about her and wanted to buy her a new one. The volunteer took her to a store and invited her to choose one. They picked it out together, whatever she wanted, and put it on the gentleman’s credit card. He had never been in Mississippi.
“This is why I appreciate the volunteers. They do things and they don’t even know you,” she says. “They did so much for us. So much. It was terrible, this storm, but when things like this happen, it also shows us the best in people.”
— Story and photo by Kris Dreessen