A year after Katrina residents reconstruct their lives piece by piece

Published: 2006-08-21

GULFPORT, Miss. (CNS) -- A year after Hurricane Katrina, residents along Mississippi's coast are reconstructing their lives piece by piece while the region's economic base searches for a footing. The brick walls of David Morten's summer home are gone now. Atop the sheared foundation are scattered remnants: a tiny brown bottle once used to hold vanilla extract, a blue lighter, several lengths of plastic pipe and a pair of pliers. Somewhere among the rubble and ruin, Morten's sister, Shirley Henderson, looks for hope. The editor of the Biloxi Diocese's Gulf Pine Catholic and, at times, the face of the diocese in her role as the director of communications, Henderson cannot but project hope. Like many Southern families, Henderson's extended family lives close by, many of them within a mile of each other in Harrison County. More than 5,500 people in that county along the coast were still without homes by the end of July. Now they are scattered throughout the community and beyond, their homes reduced to piles of bricks.

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