NEW ORLEANS-
Michigan State horticulture professor Art Cameron couldn’t believe what he saw when he visited New Orleans last summer.
He was shocked to find much of the city still in ruins a year after Hurricane Katrina and he wanted to help.
He and Tom Fernandez, an associate professor of horticulture and faculty adviser for the Michigan State Horticulture Club, organized and raised funds for 46 people from the school, mostly undergraduates, to travel to New Orleans during the school’s winter break to help clean up City Park, one of the oldest and largest urban parks in the nation.
The hurricane flooded 90 percent of the 150-year-old park, covering it with up to eight feet of water. The salt water that flowed in with the flood killed most of the grass, including that on the golf courses, and many of the park’s stately magnolia trees.
Flood waters also ravaged the park’s administration building, where archives were lost, computers ruined and records soaked. Much of the maintenance building collapsed and all the vehicles and equipment owned by the park were destroyed.
During a three-day stay, the Michigan group replaced a shed in the park, worked on the roof of the Pelican Greenhouse and cleaned up debris and downed trees.
The Michigan State workers were one of six groups–one made up of 300 people–who did volunteer work at the park in December.
“It went great,” said Fernandez, a former resident of Baton Rouge. “We got a lot done.”
For information about volunteering at the park, visit .
