Lafitte coming back to life with help of volunteers

by Molly Reid, The Times-Picayune, Saturday September 20, 2008

Jean Lafitte Boulevard bustled Saturday as throngs of flood-beleaguered residents, cleanup crews and aid workers traveled along the single thoroughfare in and out of Lafitte, the Jefferson Parish town hit with a devastating tidal surge from Hurricane Ike a week ago.

Halfway between the southernmost point of Lafitte and a 10-foot-high, city block-long pile of discarded furnishings and debris next to the Louisiana 3134 interchange, residents and relief workers were offered a midday meal right on the road as teams of good Samaritans handed out boxed lunches and cold drinks.

Several dozen students, faculty and parents from Academy of Our Lady in Marrero served more than 1,200 lunches of hot dogs and hamburgers free to anyone with enough time to stop on the boulevard or pull into a makeshift drive-through.

“We've been running back and forth a lot,” said Brianna Melancon, a 14-year-old freshman at Academy of Our Lady, as she handed a stack of four boxes to two cleanup workers in a pickup truck. Earlier in the day, from about 11 a.m. to noon, the line of hungry drivers had stretched nearly a mile down the road, she said.

The free lunch was an impromptu volunteer idea generated by several faculty members, including Kelly Favaloro, a theater teacher whose Lafitte home did not flood. “We threw this together from Wednesday. Our seniors donated 600 hot dog buns, our students donated money, we passed a collection plate at Friday Mass for the first time and raised $1,000 ... and we sold 'Helping Hands’ buttons. We raised $2,000 since Wednesday,” Favaloro said.

Behind her, an assembly line of women in matching blue T-shirts prepared the boxed lunches while other women cooked the meat on a large grill.