NEW ORLEANS - These days, Sylvia Blanchard of Gentilly can't help but smile as she looks around her newly repaired home.
"It was like a mircale, it just was a miracle to me, you know I didn't think this would happen."
But there was so little to smile about three years ago about when her husband Anthony, a VIetnam Veteran with three Purple Hearts had a serious stroke that left him disabled on the day the Road Home turned him down for the second time.
"He had a massive stroke, went to the Road Home, and they gave him the run around, and fooled around, and he had a massive stroke, and been down ever since."
"It was one of those cases that just broke my heart," said Connie Uddo of the St. Paul's Homecoming Center. "It literally ripped me in two. I remember driving home and feeling sick to my stomach, crying."
But the despair turned into a celebration last month when the Blanchard home was completed, blessed, and the ribbon cut. The St. Paul's Episcopal Church Homecoming Center joined forces with Episcopal Community Services, and they brought in more than one thousand volunteers to finish the Blanchard home.
"36 volunteer groups on this house over the last two years," said a smiling Connie Uddo. "We finally were doing it, so it was Oh Happy Day!"
"There's nothing like the reward of seeing homeowners actually able to come back to their homes, and volunteers so enthusiastic about the experience,"said Nell Bolton of Episcopal Community Services.
Sylvia says the two groups gave her more than a home.
"They gave us hope. They gave him something to look forward to, because he would not be here, you know, he just wouldn't be here."
"I was so depressed, and so down, and so tired of being in a fema trailer I just couldn't take it any more,"said Gentilly resident Paul Bernard.
Paul Bernard says the depression he fought for so long as he battled Road Home is finally lifting, because he was just able to move out of his FEMA trailer, and he credits help from the St. Paul's Homecoming Center, and volunteers like the students from National Cathedral School in Washington D.C.
"Thank God there's help, because when I first started this project, and learned what kind of funding I had, my decision was I'll do it myself," he said.
But five years out from Katrina, the St. Paul's Homecoming Center and Episcopal Community Services know they are going to need a lot more help to get these houses completed, help from the local community.
"I have people still living in gutted houses," said Connie Uddo. "I have people still living in FEMA trailers and falling through the cracks, like the Blanchards. What happens to them if we can't continue our work? So we need funding."
"At this point a lot of homeowners no longer have any funds to use to get those materials," added Nell Bolton. "We have the labor, and the goodwill, and the labor and the volunteers, we really need to be able to get ther supplies for them to work with."
The two groups have ten houses now being renovated, people like Paul Bernard who are still tyring to kick Katrina out of their lives.
"Had it not been for those people, and the St. Paul's Homecoming Center, I would probably be looking at another six months to a year in that trailer," Bernard concluded.
