Singing River Youth Orchestra Helps Young Survivors of Hurricane Katrina

August 29, 2005, will remain alive in the minds and hearts of everyone who lived here. Katrina was the storm for which we weren't prepared. We didn't tell our children that their schools might be destroyed. We didn't warn them that their homes might be no more. We didn't prepare ourselves or our children for the possible death of their pets.

For nearly a year no subject could be discussed except in the light of Katrina. Schools met at odd places and odd times, making a normal classroom experience difficult. The children in the classrooms went home to grandmother's house, or to a FEMA trailer park, or to a FEMA trailer parked outside their destroyed home. Parents who were struggling to deal with insurance companies, FEMA, other aid agencies, with getting homes fixed, with learning to do home repairs, and the endless other difficulties could not focus as much as they would have liked to on school work, sports, or extracurricular learning.

Two years later too many Jackson county children are still in FEMA trailers or in other temporary housing situations and PTSD in both children and adults is too common. Yet, much has improved, and that is what this story is about.

Von Deen was 12 years old and lived in an apartment with his mom and new little infant brother when Katrina hit. He was playing soccer and baseball, and dreamed of football. He had started in the band program in school, and taken a few piano lessons as well. After Katrina there was no hope of football that year. He had no trumpet and no way to continue in piano lessons. The apartment was gone. They moved into a shelter, lived briefly with a grandmother upstate, then moved back to the area into a FEMA trailer in a trailer park. He had to go to a different school, with different friends, but everyone else had to adapt as well.