Article: Zeta Cousin and Katrina

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This is a neat article about my husband's Zeta cousin and her family!
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Relief trip turns into a lesson for life


Foster dad brings help to small Alabama town
09/13/05
By Diane Wagner, Rome News-Tribune Staff Writer
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Jonathan Whitley, with wife Wendy and daughters Sally (left) and Mary Elizabeth, says he wanted to teach his foster kids that “you help people however you can.” William T. Martin / RN-T
The Wednesday after Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast, Jonathan and Wendy Whitley decided they could no longer just sit and watch the horrific images on television.

The faces of the homeless children, Jonathan Whitley said, started looking like those of the couple’s 10 children at their WinShape foster home on the Berry College campus.

“My wife suddenly said ‘I’ll take care of the kids if you go,’” he said. “So we talked to friends, they wrote some checks, we loaded up a truck and I was on the road Thursday night.”

Originally bound for Jackson, Miss., or Mobile, Ala., Whitley got a last-minute call from Mobile that diverted him to the small, forgotten town of Bayou La Batre, Ala.

“The Red Cross had not been there. FEMA had not been there. The only thing they had was the little truckload I brought,” he said. “There were pieces of shrimp boats on the highway, dead dogs everywhere and people out in their yards just looking at what was left of their homes.”




Sleepy and bored on the nine-hour drive, Whitley had called a Mobile radio station at 3 a.m. to talk about his trip.

Other listeners soon showed up to pitch in. Government aid came a few days later but, when Whitley made his second trip down Tuesday, the reinforcements were gone.

“The governor said the relief was needed more in Pascagoula,” he said. “The little church was left in charge of everything in that area.”

Ironically, the pastor of the Bayou La Batre church had been on staff at West Rome Baptist Church 15 years ago with Whitley’s father-in-law, Bob Skelton. West Rome Baptist has since joined with Fellowship Baptist and The Church at Northside to adopt the town.

Whitley — who stopped in Gadsden, Ala., both times to visit his hospitalized grandmother — said he took on his mission mainly to help the hurricane victims but also as a lesson for his kids.

“They helped load the truck. They saw me leave. They saw me come back exhausted,” he said. “And they took it to heart.”

The 2-year-old offered to give up her bed, he said, and the oldest donated her paycheck from Chick-fil-A. The 12-year-old chipped in her birthday money while the 5-year-old twins combed the house for spare change.

“That was the lesson we wanted to teach,” Whitley said. “You help people however you can. You don’t just stand back and do nothing.”