Elderly woman's New Orleans home is gutted for rebuilding

Published: 2006-03-03

NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- Eighty-five-year-old Clothilde Mack hardly batted an eye as a crew of Catholic college students walked in and out of the home where she had lived for nearly 50 years and dumped its water-damaged belongings into a heap in her front yard. They weren't just clearing out broken furniture, appliances, rusted lamps, blankets and clothes, but boxes overflowing with chunks of drywall and carpeting. A student from Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., asked her if she wanted an empty chest they found, but Mack shook her head no and smiled, saying she had all she needed. What she needed, it turned out, was a table, some pictures and a certificate from her first job. She was also interested in keeping the box of plates and dishes that had been placed by the curb, a coffee maker and a cat scratching post. While the college students on their spring break cleared her home, Mack sat in the shade of her garage right alongside the water mark left by the flooding after the levees broke.

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