By Linda Stout
ITHACA — A group of Tompkins County residents

hauled loads of furniture to the New Orleans area and worked there and in Mississippi on cleaning up storm-damaged houses during the recent holiday break, but it’s only the beginning.

A caravan of 11 people made it to New Orleans, depositing furniture and appliances hauled in two moving trucks, working through a United Methodist relief group, a small Baptist church and in the Native American community of Dulac, La., southwest of New Orleans.

Trucking furniture to New Orleans was the brainchild of Catherine Martinez, a psychotherapist, and she got help from a number of people, including Dan Thurnheer of Danby, who drove a 48-foot truck as he did four times last year to deliver hurricane relief. They created a new organization called Love Knows No Bounds to help Ithaca people to reach out to those in New Orleans.
While getting people back into their houses is the first priority, she said, furnishing those homes with furniture, appliances and things like new bed sheets is also vital. The local group is one of the few that are donating furniture.

“The furniture and appliance thing was so great,” she said, “because it’s not being done.”

Martinez took her kids — Justine, 16, and Randy, 14 — and did mucking out work in preparation for gutting and renovating a house.

Despite worries before the trip about having enough money for tolls and gas, they might have enough donations to reimburse people who made local errands to pick up furniture before the trip.

Now the plan is to collect even more furniture, computers and other goods to be distributed by a church run by Bruce Davenport in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, and send a group again in April. Davenport has a wish list that includes more furniture, Martinez said.

In addition, Martinez said there’s some early discussion of possibly sending a group of Lehman Alternative Community School students to New Orleans in May.

Bob Asta of Ithaca, who went on the December trip, said he spoke with people there about what an enormous job it will be to restore the city.

“It’s going to take 20 years to get it back to the way it was,” he said.

He shared photos he had taken of houses tuned on their sides, mold, flood-ruined clothes still hanging in closets, and of the group of Ithaca friends who went to New Orleans. He said he was relatively new to Ithaca, having come here four years ago from Albuquerque, N.M., and found that the trip and Love Knows No Bounds was a good way to take part in the community and get to know people.

Martinez said this ongoing mission has already touched her life deeply.

“You know that saying, ‘It’s better to give than receive?’ Until you do that, you don’t know how much better it is,” she said. “Everyone was so grateful, and they could turn around and help other people.”

lstout@ithacajournal.com