March 5, 2009 Issue
Boone’s Latendresse Spends 10 Months Living and Giving With AmeriCorps
Lindsey Latendresse, who worked for 10 months in AmeriCorps, is now back in Boone taking classes and looking ahead to a future of continuing service and compassion. Photo submitted
The paths we take in life can lead us in a million directions. Being young and having an unwritten future is something not everyone can take full advantage of. When 20-year-old Lindsay Latendresse decided to take a break from school and register for a 10-month stint in AmeriCorps instead, she probably never expected to end up working with the Red Cross in Baton Rouge, La. as a staffing coordinator for all of the shelters in Louisiana. But living life can take you to interesting and sometimes difficult places, and her experience with AmeriCorps is no exception.
In the beginning of 2008, Latendresse began looking for volunteer options, both in and out of the country. AmeriCorps caught her eye, as one of the few well-established long-term free service organizations in the country.
AmeriCorps is a program created under President Clinton’s National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. More than 70,000 people join AmeriCorps annually, and they are sent, in teams of ten—including one team leader—to do 4 separate service projects, ranging from public education to environmental clean up to building homes for those in need. One of the focuses of the organization is disaster relief, so at any moment, if a disaster strikes, teams can be taken from whatever jobs they are doing and sent to wherever help is needed.
Latendresse signed up for AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps), which is a program for 18 to 24 year olds. On February 14, 2008, she flew into Denver, Colo., and began living and training on the AmeriCorps campus located there. During the month, she and her classmates were taught basic carpentry skills, given diversity training and got certified in CPR and first aid.
“I met the best people there,” said Latendresse. “There were about 300 people in my class in Denver, and we all had that common purpose of giving to the community. It was so awesome to be so surrounded by people that have the same goals. I have friends I’ll keep forever and contacts all over the country now.”
There was a job lottery for each round of projects that determined which groups went where, and between jobs each group would head back to Denver for two weeks for debriefing, meetings with AmeriCorps leaders and time to transition into the next job. At the first job lottery, her team of ten drew trail building in Big Bend National Park in Texas. There, she and her team members camped in total seclusion, about 1.5 hours away from the nearest grocery store. They built trails in the national park and learned to live and work with one another.
Latendresse said, “When you are in the middle of nowhere with a group of people, living and working and being with them all the time, it is hard to not come out of it feeling like family. You learn to work with each other’s strengths. Everyone learns to fill a part.”
Lindsay Latendresse, second from left at the top, with her teammates. Photo submitted
Their second project was in Pearlington, Miss., building homes through the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. They worked under the Jimmy Carter bill, which means constructing 10 homes in five days.
“Jimmy Carter was actually there, and everyone we worked with was so positive. We learned almost everything you need to know about house building. I can put up a frame, install doors, paint, put up roofing and more,” said Latendresse.
The third project had the group in New Orleans’s Lower 9th Ward, one of the places most adversely affected by Hurricane Katrina. Working with the organization Hope has a Face, she rebuilt interiors of homes that had been gutted by Katrina. Despite all the time that has passed since the hurricane ravaged the area, much of New Orleans has not been rebuilt.
“Even places like Wal-Mart and Taco Bell were still boarded up. If big corporations are still not reopened, you can imagine how slow the process is for regular people. I thought more had been done, so it was a really eye-opening experience. Some people were still really angry there,” she added.
They stayed in a warehouse, with makeshift rooms made out of tarps, and spent much time working, but they still had time to enjoy the city. Latendresse said, “The culture of New Orleans was definitely still alive.”
It was on their fourth mission when they got called in to do disaster relief. Latendresse and her team were about to leave to do work with the Audubon Society when they were told that the plans were changing, and that they were going to be flying to Baton Rouge because Hurricane Gustav had just hit. The power lines were still down and businesses were still closed when they arrived. She and her teammates were assigned various jobs. Some were loading food trucks and others were answering phones, but somehow she was singled out for a special job.
A now 21-year-old Latendresse found herself in the middle of a team running all of the city’s Red Cross shelters.
“The girl I took over from took me outside, and she got up in front of about 100 volunteers and started updating them on the storm, and then she told them I would be training to take over for her. I wasn’t even really aware of that until she said it,” said Latendresse.
All the volunteers in the area had to go through her to get things done. Latendresse was in charge of coordinating all the shelters, creating schedules, staffing and organizing breaks. It was, as she said, “The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
A typical day for her consisted of running at least four meetings—one in the morning to make sure people were where they needed to be, and later follow-up meetings to work with problems that arose during the day, delegating tasks to Red Cross workers and volunteers and AmeriCorps workers alike.
“It was draining because all my friends on my team had regular jobs, and I had somehow been put in this position of responsibility. I was willing to do anything I possibly could to help these people, so I was fresh and ready to help, but it was still hard,” she added.
Basic carpentry was one of the many skills Lindsay Latendresse and her team developed while on the job. Photo submitted
Everyone in the shelters had her number, so any problems that shelters were having came to her.
“At one point I got a call about someone at a shelter blew crack into a Red Cross counselor’s face, and I wasn’t sure what to say, because I couldn’t even picture what people did with crack. It was strange being such a small town girl in the middle of all of this,” said Latendresse.
Anything that could possibly go wrong did: food that was supposed to be there not making it, not enough cots, people being sick, violence and drugs.
“It was hard,” she said, “because I didn’t know the rules that well, so I sometimes had to make judgment calls, without there being time for me to run and find out what the rule was.”
“When I was doing the Red Cross work I was thankful that I had been in Pearlington first. There, things were definitely close to being rebuilt. It was good to have comparison between Louisiana and Pearlington, so you could see what all the work in New Orleans and Baton Rouge would get to, if people keep going at it.”
The pledge taken by all participants in AmeriCorps ends with the line “I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done.” Latendresse lived that line to its fullest potential.
After her job was taken over by new workers, Latendresse’s team was moved to a FEMA headquarters in Austin, Texas. After the hectic pace of the Louisiana job, answering phones at a desk job was quite a change in tempo. There, she and her teammates had the job of calling people who had been affected by the hurricane and checking in on them.
“I was so exhausted from all the work I did at Red Cross, so at first FEMA seemed like a relief, but it was really so hard to go from being able to personally help someone in person to being on a phone. Someone would start yelling at you, over the phone, like one woman who was pulling water moccasins and alligators out of her basement. Of course she’s yelling. These people lost everything. It was tough feeling so disconnected,” she explained.
After the ten months were over, she and her team made their way back to Denver for one last round of debriefing.
“It was ten months of so many experiences,” she said, “I can’t think of any other program where I could get such a crash course into life. Coming from Boone, you don’t see much violence, you don’t see much poverty. In disaster areas things change, and I saw things I never imagined.”
After having this experience, Latendresse believes that learning has a new meaning. “Before I left, my mind wasn’t completely in school. I wasn’t ready for it, and I wasn’t getting as much from it as I should have. After getting back, I have a totally different outlook on it. I want to learn now. I want to prepare myself so I can know enough to help people. This experience made me want to be the best person I can be for other people. Seeing how much help our world needs makes me want to try really hard to contribute my best.”
Latendresse is planning on attending nursing school in Denver, hopefully either at Colorado Mountain College or the University of Colorado at Denver.
“I’m ready to explore the world,” she said, “I really want to learn now. I’ve realized how lucky I am.”
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