On Friday morning, September 2, 2005, my wife Linda and I watched a visibly shaken Harry Connick, Jr. on a morning news show.  He was decrying the lack of response to the New Orleans people.  He was pleading for help and wondering aloud about the absence of any meaningful relief effort.  How was it, Connick challenged, that all of the news crews could get into New Orleans, that he and his entourage could travel to the civic center, but that relief convoys were being denied entry, that the government was still mobilizing, all while people were dying?  It was too much to bear.  Third world conditions within a day's drive of my comfortable, safe and dry home.  10 hours from me people were starving, dehydrating and dying while we were trying to find room in our pantry for the recently purchased groceries.  How could this happen?  How could we allow it?  How could I sit and watch it?     

            As America watched the tragedy in New Orleans unfold, the rest of the Gulf Coast remained almost entirely out of the news.  Knowing that the northeastern wall of Gulf hurricanes render the greatest damage, I became increasingly concerned about the Mississippi and Alabama coastal area.  There are few high profile communities but many economically depressed ones throughout in that region.  If New Orleans, commanding 24 hour press coverage, was receiving so little relief assistance, how desperate must the situation be in Gautier, Long Beach and the other communities dotting the Gulf Coast?  I could not shake the images of the despair in New Orleans, the utter grief of sweat-soaked mothers holding crying babies, elderly people literally dying in the street, throngs of poor people seemingly left only to view the back of America.  If this was occurring on prime time TV, what was happening in Mississippi and Alabama?

            Sitting at my desk in the Public Defender's Office late Friday afternoon, I felt a most powerful force; an overwhelming press of immediacy, but wrapped in perfect calm.  I flashed to 9/11/01 and my feelings of complete impotence in the face of it.  I recalled last year's terrible tsunami and my feelings of thorough distress at my inability to help.  I called Linda.  She reported what I felt -- paralysis.  At that instance, I decided that I would not be paralyzed by fear of inadequacy, I would not continue to sit and question the lack of response.  At that moment, Pickin' Up the Pieces Relief Corps was formed, not formally but in my mind and in my heart.  Inspired by the words of the Widespread Panic song by the same title, I told Linda I was going to Mississippi.  Late into the night Friday I loaded my truck with as many supplies as it would hold; Linda stuffed backpacks with clothes and toys.  Saturday morning I headed west, stopping in Ocean Springs late in the afternoon and distributing supplies.  I drove into Long Beach, where I met wonderful people who took me in for the night.  Sunday morning I distributed supplies in Long Beach and west Gulfport, then spent the afternoon unloading relief supplies from Chinook helicopters and working a distribution line at a local high school, where we distributed several tractor trailer loads of water, MREs and ice.  Lines of weary people dripping sweat and cars starting and stopping to conserve precious gas weaved a serpentine humanity through a virtual wasteland.  Adults and children alike wanted to touch you, hug you, thank you and bless you.  I left Gulfport late Sunday night, exhausted yet exhilarated.  Driving home, I began organizing Pickin' Up the Pieces in earnest.  "Just another day."

            On Tuesday, September 6, 2005 (my parents' 41st wedding anniversary), I emailed several friends and acquaintances, then my colleagues in the Savannah Bar Association, and shared my weekend experience.  I solicited assistance from any who wished to make donations of relief supplies.  By Friday morning, I had collected more than a ton and a half of supplies and nearly $1,000.00 in financial gifts.  My brother-in-law, Michael Gale, donated a Chemical South Transport trailer.  People in the community called to ask me to distribute items they had collected.  Two youngsters, one 7, the other 8, sent water, food and hundreds of stuffed animals.  Linda drove all over Chatham County picking up donations.  Billy Hester, pastor of Asbury Memorial United Methodist Church, called to donate 150 Bibles.  We were truly Pickin' Up the Pieces. 

            Many friends and co-workers from the Public Defender's Office worked late into Friday evening packing supplies.  Todd Martin, an assistant public defender, gave up his weekend and joined me Saturday morning as we again headed west, this time with a truck and trailer load of supplies.  We arrived in Pass Christian late Saturday afternoon.  We convinced the National Guard to permit us into the quarantine area, where we camped for the night.  Sunday morning we began distributing the supplies.  As the sun rose and revealed what we'd only seen in silhouette the night before, we were stunned to the point of silence by the level of devastation.  We delivered to a small distribution center, a distribution line at a school, several churches and, eventually, Camp Katrina in Waveland, further west.  In Bay St. Louis, we distributed Bibles to a congregation holding services in the parking lot beside their destroyed church.  We gave away several 5 gallon cans of gas, filling one car of now homeless and penniless women.  One woman wept as we handed her a bag of sheets and a Bible.  The attending priest told us that only moments before we pulled up to the relief center the woman had prayed for each item we miraculously arrived bearing.  Todd and I arrived back in Savannah at 5:30 Monday morning, exhausted, aching and planning what to do next.  Juxtaposing the world we had left as the sun was setting Sunday with the one we re-entered with the sunrise on Monday was a difficult task.  Processing what we witnessed will take a long time.

            We arrived home to find that Linda had continued her relief work locally during our absence, connecting with several others in our community, including the youth group at Asbury Memorial United Methodist Church, who were stuffing backpacks for displaced children and other projects.  My sister, Lissa Alvarez, had kept up with our journey and offered to help us incorporate Pickin' Up the Pieces Relief Corps. Sarah Arkins, offered to help us develop this web site.  Numerous others have offered to donate supplies and financial gifts as we prepare to make a return trip to the region.  Overnight this small, grassroots organization has taken on a life of its own.

            I thank God for allowing Pickin' Up the Pieces to happen.  I thank my wife, Linda, for her support.  I thank Dallas and Michelle Strickland, Tiffany Talley, Bill Dowell, Todd Martin, Danny and Jonathan Wise, my children Joseph and Nicole, for all their help packing and loading supplies; to Thomas Trawick for helping us publicize our mission; to the many others who have given so graciously and cared so deeply.  Each of them deserve to be recognized and will be as this site develops.  Our efforts to relieve the suffering brought on by Hurricane Katrina will be but the first of many occasions that we answer the call of our brothers and sisters in need.  Pickin' Up the Pieces is more than only Katrina relief.  To this day, much work is needed to relieve the suffering caused by last year's tsunami.  Deadly tornadoes and floods have made their marks on our region time and again throughout the years, and surely will continue to into the future.  Locally, shelters need assistance, people need help.  There is always a need.  Pickin' Up the Pieces will be here to answer the call.  One person helping another, one at a time.

            One love, Michael