Kathleen Koch Visits Club

JONESBORO — Author Kathleen Koch, a champion of volunteerism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, spoke to the Jonesboro Rotary Club on Tuesday about her experiences after the storm ravished the Mississippi Gulf Coast and, more specifically, her hometown, of Bay St. Louis, Miss.

She stopped in Jonesboro on a Southern tour promoting her new book, “Rising From Katrina.”

Koch is an former correspondent for CNN, where she worked 18 years.

“I wrote the book because, sadly, far too often in the news industry ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’” she said.

In her book, Koch focused on the Mississippi Gulf Cost instead of New Orleans because that area took the brunt of the storm.

“If you poll Americans today and asked ‘where did Hurricane Katrina hit?’ Most of them would say New Orleans. While the levees broke there, the Mississippi Gulf Coast didn’t have levees,” she said.

Koch said she made it a point to visit the Jonesboro Rotary chapter because its members, and members from two other area chapters, went to Bay St. Louis in November 2005 and served Thanksgiving dinner to more than 3,500 storm victims.

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, as a Category 5 storm — the highest designation possible. It was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history at $81.2 billion.

“The word most often used down there is ‘blessed,’ but we would think ‘cursed.’ You would see someone living under their carport, and if you walked up they would ask you if you needed a drink and if you wanted to sit down,” Koch said. “Volunteerism was the silver lining of Katrina.”

“Rising From Katrina” is published by John F. Blair Publishing and costs $14.95.

—Ray Whiteside