Hot News

11.29.05

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS

This is about an Eastern Shore boy of many years ago who came back to the Shore briefly and, now a man, went back home with a check for $45,000.
It’s also about 200 or so Queen Anne’s County farmers, business and government folk sitting down together for breakfast to demonstrate that Queen Anne’s County does, indeed, care.
The early morning get-together was the county’s 16th annual Harvest Breakfast at the county 4-H park on Nov. 18.
This year, the ‘harvest” — apart from that in the fields — represented an outpouring of civic spirit and community generosity for the people of a sister county on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
On hand to accept that outpouring, often with tears in his eyes, was Gene Taylor, a U.S. congressman from Mississippi whose hometown, Bay St. Louis, and his county, Hancock, were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina’s 30-foot wall of water, topped by six foot breakers.
Taylor traces his roots to the Eastern Shore of Virginia where his family farmed and worked the water until his father decided to take this family south and settled in Hancock County because “it looked just like the Eastern Shore.”
Taylor, described by fellow congressman Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland as “not a Democrat, not a Republican, not a politician, a man of great compassion who came to Congress because he wanted to make a difference in the lives of his people,” said that 20,000 homes in Hancock County were destroyed — including his own.
Two-thirds of the homes in his district are not habitable, 14,000 families are living in travel trailers and another 14,000 are praying for a place to live.
Still, Congressman Taylor said, “The people are amazingly resilient… and we will make it because of people like you.”
The presentation to Taylor of the check for $45,000 — money which will be distributed by a bank in Hancock County to families who did not have insurance —was not the end of the charitable campaign.
Contributions continue to come in, and at the same, other efforts are under way by firemen, veterans, church groups and civic organizations to bring relief: clothing, building materials, equipment, books for the schools and libraries, computers, pen pal friendships to the people of Hancock County.
“This,” said county ag agent Paul Gunther who fathered the ‘Queen Anne’s County Cares’ effort, “is just the first of a lot of things.”
In a room adjoining the meeting room at the 4-H park, there sat an old-fashioned sleigh.
There was no charge for the breakfast; folks were asked only to bring a gift for a Hancock County child.
Gifts were so abundant that they tumbled out of the sleigh to the floor around it.
“Our goal,” Gunther said, “with the holiday season approaching, is to have a gift for every child in Hancock County.”
Tall order? Maybe not. Queen Anne’s County cares.