BY Neil B. McGahee
More than 200 Georgia Tech students plan to spend Easter weekend rebuilding a New Orleans city park that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
A year and a half after it was submerged under six feet of water, there has been no effort to repair Community Street Park in St. Bernard Parish, but members of Tech's Christian Campus Fellowship plan to construct a new playground and refurbish a baseball field and a gymnasium.
"When the levee broke, the baseball fields were pretty much washed away," said Derek Lewis, ME 06, a CCF staff member. "The fences and bleachers were just mangled pieces of metal and the gym suffered severe water damage. We're going to rebuild one field and the gym and construct a new playground for the little kids."
Lewis said this is CCF's third trip to the Gulf Coast since the storm.
"Six weeks after the storm hit we organized 'Geaux to the Gulf,'" Lewis said. "More than 200 Tech students spent their fall break helping people clean up along the Mississippi coast. Last fall, we organized 'Geaux to the Gulf Part Deux' and sent nearly 180 students to New Orleans. Now we're going back to work again."
Lisa Bradway, a fifth-year mechanical engineering student, is looking forward to her third trip.
"The first two trips were spent helping people gut their houses and remove rubble," she said. "It was pretty grim, but this time we'll be in an area that is on its way to recovery and this project can restore the community spirit that once was there."
Lewis said the students have collected $25,000 to build the playground, but they need more money to cover travel expenses and a special treat — an Easter egg hunt for more than 1,000 children.
Information on donating financial or material support is available at http://www.eggsintheeasy.org/atlanta/.
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