Myself along with other members of our 20th class reunion committee had worked many hours prior to this weekend to get ready for a great reunion with our classmates. And you guessed, the flood changed those plans too. Originally we thought we might be able to relocate our reunion to another venue seeing as how our original location at Greystone Golf and Country Club had also been a victim to the flood waters. After much thought and consideration, we decided to cancel. We didn't want to move the event out of the city; out of town guests had no where to stay...hotels were damaged, their "momma's house" was damaged; it just wasn't the right time. One of our classmates suggested a work day to help classmates who were touched by the flood. From there we ran with it. Our goal was to still make it a class reunion event only on a smaller level and it was a great success.
Following the day of work, we of course had to plan some time to play!! We all met up at Walk On's for some dinner and shared laughs and memories from years past. Everyone was in agreement that there will be a 21 year reunion next year!
DSHS Class of 1996 to the rescue
Usually, a 20-year class reunion is a special event. It’s a life milestone. Classmates are 20 years older, most have married, they’re all well on their way in their careers and many have children.
It’s an event most graduates look forward to because they want to know what happened to their friends, how their lives turned out, how much they’ve changed.
The reunion planned for the Denham Springs Class of 1996 turned into something entirely different. Scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 23 and Sept. 24, the Great Flood of 2016 made a normal reunion impossible.
Instead, many of the alumni who planned on attending the reunion launched an effort to work together to help out their friends, their friends’ families and even a former teacher or two recover from flood damage.
Planning for the reunion began about a year ago, said Julie Jacobson, who ended up instead organizing a day for her classmates to work on flooded houses rather than the fun activities that had been planned.
“We had a venue, a band, we had it all figured out,” she said, then the high water came. “We realized that for the people coming in from out of town, there are no hotels for them to stay in - their parents’ homes had flooded.”
After posting the cancellation of the event on the Class of 1996’s reunion page on Facebook, Jacobson said someone suggested, “Why don’t we do a work day.” The classmates got together Saturday.
“We ended up with 17 classmates plus some spouses,” she said. “One even brought her mother. We ended up with 21 people in all.”
And while many from the DSHS Class of ’96 endured flood damage themselves, Jacobson said finding people who would accept help was a challenge.
“Problem was I couldn’t get people to let us help them,” she said. “I knew we had a ton of classmates who had water in their houses so I started contacting them personally and saying, ‘Please let us help you because we’ve got a group coming.’”
“They would tell me, ‘There’s someone else who needs it more than me, so we don’t need anything. Y’all go help somebody else,’” Jacobson continued.
While she had hoped the event would be a matter of classmates helping classmates, the invitation for assistance was expanded to include their immediate family and former teachers.
The group gathered at the fieldhouse at their old school, a flood victim, then divided into groups of three or four, said Jacobson, now a geometry teacher at her alma mater. The group worked at six houses and cut the grass in the yards of four others.
“It was good because I think everybody wanted to help out but didn’t know how,” she said. “And I think it was important to the homeowners because they knew they hadn’t been forgotten.”
“Things are moving on,” Jacobson said. “Businesses are starting to open, the kids are back in school, but there’s still so much to do. We could probably do this every Saturday between now and Christmas and we would still be able to find someone who needs help.”
Her classmates were proud and happy about the change in plans.
“After six weeks of dealing with flood cleanup with my own home, it was such a great experience being able to go and help other classmates and former teachers,” said Kristy Allen Poynor. “With so many homes damaged, the ones you would normally count on to help you were busy dealing with their own situation.”
“During the day Saturday, I was able to work alongside great friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in 20 years,” she continued. “We were told how much we were appreciated, but we were the ones who received the biggest blessings by being able to help others.”
“We felt that even though we had to cancel our reunion, it was important to try to get together informally and to be able to give back to our community,” Poynor said. “The Class of 1996 always knew how to have a good time, and this weekend was no exception.”
“It really was a blessing to be able to help our former high school teacher Mrs. Robbie Spangler and her daughter Catherine clean up at their home,” Kristi Westmoreland Jett said. “Being affected by the flood myself, I know how wonderful it is to have people show up willing to work.”
“They were very excited and appreciative of what the Class of 1996 was doing, and I left there feeling good knowing we were able to help such wonderful people,” she continued.
“It is very difficult to wrap my head around what has happened… It still feels like a bad dream,” said Missy Pereira LeBlanc. “So many members of my friends and family have lost everything. My parents lost their home… It’s a hard thing to watch your parents throw out wedding pictures, baby pictures, a wedding dress.”
“…But when we didn’t know how we would make it, God sent angels from all over - people from all over the state and other states began showing up to help,” she continued. “People we didn’t even know. It was overwhelming watching everyone showing up to help wonderful friends and family.”
“We will survive this, we will rebuild and heal together as a community,” LeBlanc said. “Watching my lifelong friends and classmates cancel our class reunion and come together again to help others in need was overwhelming. I am so humbled and blessed to have grown up in a strong knit community that is bound by a bond that cannot be broken but only made stronger.”
Drew Foster talked about how many of his classmates are now “scattered across the country” but many “from near and far began to make plans to come to the reunion” with “excitement and giddy anticipation at the prospect of getting together again. This was going to be great.”
“Then came the Great Flood,” he said. “Those of us who no longer lived in Denham Springs could only watch in helpless disappointment as the pictures and videos of the devastation scrolled across our timelines and came into our living rooms on the nightly news.”
“We hurt for our friends and the community that fostered us through our most impressionable years,” Foster continued. “We wanted to do something, but what?”
A member of the reunion’s Facebook page, it was there that he found out about the cancellation of the long-awaited event and that “there was to be a work day instead of a reunion party,” he said. “Not exactly a big draw for most people, but we aren’t most people.”
Foster contacted his best friend and classmate Trae Roberts, now living in South Carolina. “We didn’t even need to think about it. We were going to Denham Springs as scheduled. We had to. Reunion or not, we would be there.” They set out the day they arrived to see their hometown.
“We had to see Denham Springs with our own eyes,” he said. “You already know what we saw. The war zone. The empty homes and businesses. The mountains of debris. The travel trailers in the driveways.”
“The vibrant town that we grew up in laid to waste,” Foster said. “It was heart wrenching. Until you see it for yourself, you don’t really know. The smell. The stories. The sadness. The helplessness. The hope. The resolve.”
Foster and Roberts were part of the team that helped a former teacher, Coach Butch Wax, and later helped at the home of a former classmate’s relative.
“Working with and visiting with them was nothing short of a pleasure,” Foster said. “It was there that I realized that even though we were only making a small dent in their recovery efforts, the impact on them, personally, was immeasurable.”
“The house had taken on several feet of water and the homeowner was working by himself to try and remove and dispose of all the damaged drywall and flooring,” he said, and he could tell the homeowner “had been working as much as he could as often as he could.”
“This was a place I knew right away we could make a huge impact,” Foster said, explaining the crew cleared out the rest of his drywall, scraped up the flooring and hauled the rest of the debris to the street.
“The homeowner was grateful and maybe a bit overwhelmed with the work that we got done,” he continued. “We left him with a little less to do, and hopefully a little more faith in people in general.”
“…I’m eternally grateful to the reunion committee for the opportunity to help out, even if only for a day,” he said. “I know I’m walking away with much more than I left behind.”
“We’re all looking forward to getting together again after things get closer to normal,” Foster said, explaining the reunion will be rescheduled for next year. “That’s going to be a great time, but I’ll never forget the reunion that didn’t happen, and I’ll walk a bit lighter with a little less debris in my heart.
“Coming together as a class and helping other classmates and their families was a true blessing,” said Rebecca Branton Blanchard. “My parents were affected by the flood as well, but we have cleaned up and are waiting to rebuild. To see others in the community not at that point is heartbreaking.”
“…I am glad that I was able to help on Saturday,” she continued. “The gratitude from the people we helped feels undeserving, because to me it’s just doing what needed to be done - helping others.”
“It’s heartbreaking to see my hometown in such disarray but I know Denham Springs will come back better and stronger,” said Connie Speight Walker. “I felt blessed to be able to join in Saturday. It was awesome to see old friends, but it was even better to know we were meeting up to lend a helping hand to those in need.”
Keri Simpson Garrison said that while she moved to Indiana in 2002, she and her family drove the nearly 1,000 miles to come back to Denham Springs to help family members who’d flooded.
“We were only there for two days but worked hard to do anything we could to help,” she said. “Like so many in the area, my parents and sister lost everything. Everyone has worked to get my parents’ house put back together and my sister’s house was put to the side.”
“When our reunion was officially cancelled and Julie came up with the idea for a day of service, I thought it was a great idea,” Garrison said, continuing she was very thankful that her sister was the recipient of some of the help the group provided the flood-ravaged city’s residents.
“For their efforts today I am forever grateful and proud to be a Yellow Jacket and a member of the Class of 1996,” she said.
