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A teacher truly making a difference

Editor's note: This profile will air tonight, Fri., Nov. 24, so I'm elevating Al's post from last week.

Every so often while I'm out on a story someone will ask me, "Who are the best people to interview?" I've done thousands of interviews, with people from all stations and stages of life. I have a special place in my heart for "ordinary" people, the folks who live off the beaten path, anonymously for the most part, because they usually don't hide their passions from anyone.

Once in a while, you find a real gem. Don Teague and I will bring you one such story tonight.

Deep in the piney woods of east Texas, we found Betty Lewing in Lufkin. Through a frankly horrible set of circumstances, she teaches remedial reading to those students who fell through the cracks of our education system. Seven years ago, her daughter was kidnapped and raped. While dealing with the pain and hurt, Betty was offered a job teaching reading to inmates in the Texas prison system. She took it, and soon discovered that many of the issues that put people in prison could be traced back to their lack of reading skills.

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Making a Difference in the hunger war

Tonight on the broadcast Don Teague and I will bring you our "Making a Difference" report for this week. The tiny town of Brighton, Iowa is an unlikely place to find a news story, but we found a good one there.

Don Fields and his wife Sandee are trying to work themselves out of a job. Their mission in life, "their calling" in their words, is to wipe out hunger everywhere on the planet. They organize one satellite operation of "Kids Against Hunger," an organization whose prepackaged meals are financed, packaged, shipped and delivered all with private donations and volunteer labor.

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Semper fi!

Here in Port Sulphur, down Highway 23 into Plaquemines Parish, once again, I see no habitable houses, just like in Cameron Parish, far to the west. We drove upon a Marine Corps flag hanging from a tree and found a former Marine trying to clear a spot to rebuild. Several buddies from his old Vietnam unit traveled from Florida to help him. They have quite a job. Katrina pushed half a dozen houses into his backyard. We'll show you the amazing pictures tonight in Carl's spot on Nightly News.

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Discovery journalism

Just a few thoughts about "Team Carl's" road trip this week. We have been doing what I call discovery journalism. We show up, record what is happening, and package that into a story for Nightly News. Generally, we decide in advance where to go, but not a specific topic, just a snapshot of where we are and what we have found. It's challenging to go someplace with a minimal amount of setup and just trust that you will find something interesting enough to justify a story for a national audience.

That being said, I wasn't worried at all. I have done hundreds of stories in this part of the world. I love the people you find "off the highways." Everyone has a story, you just need a forum for someone to hear it. I have been a journalist since I was 20 years old. I love my job. As a journalist, you have an automatic license to ask anyone just about anything. It's also a huge responsibility to use those answers in a thoughtful and responsible manner. The answers we used this week I hope were both thoughtful and responsible.

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The poison of sea salt

The flooding in Vermilion Parish became something I could touch and feel today. You pick up a leaf, a twig, anything on the ground that was covered by more than 24 feet of water, and white powder flakes off. That powder is sea salt, other minerals, toxic sludge and who knows what else was in the water, and it dried on everything... Grass, rice fields, houses, fence posts, dead animals, everything. It's annoying, it looks like snow on farm fields, and it well and truly kills everything green it touches, perhaps for years. It will take huge amounts of rain to dilute the poison enough to let crops grow or to let cattle graze. With no crops and nothing to feed cattle, you don't make any money, and you go out of business. Unfortunately, usually a family business.

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Off to Cajun Country

After Tuesday's broadcast we head a little further east, deep into Cajun country. Cajuns are a tough people, immigrating years ago from Nova Scotia, settling along the bayous, enriching us all with culture, food, and a hearty spirit.

This area was hit both by Rita and Katrina, lots of water and wind and flooding. Carl was there during Rita, in Abbeyville and Erath. I've traveled a lot in Cajun country. The damage won't be as bad as it is here in Cameron. One man told me today he was very, very lucky because he "still had something to nail to." The pilings upon which his house sat are still there.

Tomorrow will be interesting. Cajuns are fun. They're also independent, opinionated, loving, patriotic, and fiercely loyal to family and each other.

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Cameron's sad plight

CAMERON, La. - The houses here are all crooked. Either the wind or the storm surge, or more likely both, picked up most of the houses and businesses and moved them off their foundations. It's odd to drive down a street and expect to see a houses in line with the street that are not. The city of Cameron had about 1,500 people living in it and, driving around the city, I've seen no houses that can be lived in. It appears, to the untrained eye, that all of them have to be torn down.

Tonight on NBC Nightly News, Team Quintanilla will report from here and the neighboring town of Holly Beach, La. we both mentioned in earlier posts. You'll meet Wendell Murphy, a lifelong resident of Cameron. He owns four businesses here, plus a house. All of them were destroyed. This morning we watched a small bulldozer clear the debris out of one of those businesses. Despite all the damage, he's optimistic and says he will rebuild.

"This is my home," he says. "I'm not leaving."

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First impressions of Cameron Parish

Team West has arrived in Holly Beach on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in Cameron Parish. First thing we notice is that everything is gone -- houses, power lines, businesses -- everything appears as if it has been bulldozed.

It's a cold day here today. The National Guard soldiers at the checkpoint leading into town have tried to build a fire to keep warm.  It rained here last night -- hard.  Everything is wet. Mud and sand cover everything. The soldiers have to throw diesel fuel on their woodpile to keep it ignited. 

Every power line in the parish is being replaced. Old power poles line the canals and the ditches of every highway.  All of them that I've seen are broken off and not just pulled out of their holes.  This is significant because it takes 100 mph winds to snap a telephone pole. The storm surge that followed the wind submerged essentially the entire parish.  You can see evidence 9, 10 feet high of flood debris. Even though Rita hit five weeks ago, it looks like it was yesterday.

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Untold stories in Deep East Texas

Driving through deep east Texas, you get the feeling that the storm happened last week, not last month. Piles of downed trees and metal roof debris litter every street. I've covered a lot of hurricanes, and you become used to seeing that sort of thing a couple of days, or even a few weeks later. Just to the east of Orange, on the north side of Interstate 10, is a pile of tree litter and debris. It's a mile long, and almost 50 feet high. You can see from the highway there's room for it to grow, and trucks are lined up, filled to the top, to add to the pile.

There has been so little coverage of these places, towns like Orange, Deweyville, Bridge City, Vidor, that you forget a major hurricane whipped through here. We stopped to fill up at a gas station outside of Deweyville. The pumps are working, but there are no covers for them, and the awning that was once covering half of the pumps sits on the ground in a corner of the parking lot. The manager says he and his son dragged it there after the storm, and it will probably sit there until spring. The clean-up crews, he explains, are too busy with other material, and he can't afford to pay someone to come and get it.

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Waiting for help in Deweyville, Texas

On the banks of the Sabine river, the last point in Texas before you hit Louisiana, the small hamlet of Deweyville, Texas is waiting for help. It's small, only about 1,000 people. Driving through here you see eight of 10 houses with a tarp on the roof and a tree or two down in the yard. This is timber country in deep East Texas. Pine trees 80 feet tall ring most of the houses. Or at least they did until Rita passed over. The eye of the storm came right up the river. It snapped trees three feet in diameter all over the area. You can find the occasional house with a roofer on top, new shingles being slapped down, but for the most part people here are waiting. Waiting for help.

The Busby family evacuated to Missouri during the storm. They came back two weeks ago and have been living in a tent in their front yard. Cecil, his wife Christina, and their daughter, 7-year-old Brianna. Their water well works, so they have water, and as of last week, power was back, but their house can't be lived in... the ceiling fell in when trees came through the house. Cecil cut the trees out, the Corps of Engineers tarped the roof, but the Busbys are waiting for FEMA to inspect the house and either give them a housing voucher or (what they would prefer) a trailer to put on their land. Cecil's grandfather built the house, they hope they can save it.

School starts here again on Wednesday. The kids have missed 19 school days and have been out of school just shy of a month. It's the last school district in Texas to reopen after the storm. Mold is an issue throughout the High school, the roof of the elementary school was peeled back, and the middle school had damage as well.

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