Editor's note: For the last three years, Kents Hill School students and members of the Readfield United Methodist Church have traveled to Slidell, La., for one week in March to work on hurricane-ravaged houses in the area, under the auspices of the Southeast Louisiana Disaster Recovery Center. Senior Huyette Spring just completed his second trip to Slidell.

BY HUYETTE SPRING

I went on the Slidell trip last year. Because of this, I didn't have to learn this year how to swing a hammer, how to operate in 80-degree heat while the day before trying to operate in 10-degree cold, or how to effectively pack a lunch at 6:30 in the morning when your desire to crawl back into your not-so-comfortable cot far outweighs your hunger.

I did, however, learn something new on this year's trip; this year I worked on Ms. Lehanne's home and met Ms. Lehanne.

Now, Ms. Lehanne isn't her full name. Actually, I don't know her full name; everyone down there goes by Mr. or Ms. FirstName. Anyway, Ms. Lehanne needed to have her bedroom floor replaced and also needed an extension built on her house where she could put her washing machine and dryer (at the time her washing machine was outside. She has been doing her laundry outside since Hurricane Katrina).

Unlike last year's homeowner, Ms. Lehanne was home the entire time we were building and over the course of the week we got to know her pretty well, and I would like to think vice versa. She showed us what she says was only a small slice of her massive photo-album collection. In one of the albums, of which I suspect she was most proud, she had traced her ancestry back four generations. That means Ms. Lehanne, being the elderly woman that she is, had identified one of the first women who came across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa into the systemic oppression of United States slavery.

It was about then, while she was giving us a photographic history of everyone in her family from her great great grandmother to her granddaughter, that I learned the most crucial discovery of my trip: that Ms. Lehanne has "it" right.

Ms. Lehanne was far from the most educated woman, the wealthiest woman or in the best health, but she has "it" figured out. I'm not exactly sure what the "it" is. But I think it might be a combination of a few things.

She still has all of her family around her all the time. At any given time, there were two or three young ones running around and just as many of her sisters, brothers or sons. I hope that when I am her age I will have my entire family, nuclear and extended, surrounding me. Ms. Lehanne is not very educated but has a clear mind and an uncanny ability to judge people.

When I am Ms. Lehanne's age I hope that I still have the head about me to take one look at Mr. Winter and realize the man "has a lot of brains." But finally, and more importantly than the others, Ms. Lehanne has an iron soul. A tree had landed in the middle of her house during the hurricane. Her brother has been living in a FEMA trailer across the yard. She has a severe leg problem, which leaves her almost immobile. And if that wasn't enough, last year her longtime husband was in a car accident and has blood clots in his brain, leaving him in an almost perpetual haze.

What other woman could still laugh and joke in the middle of this tragic situation? What other woman would buy us, people she has never met, real country fried chicken (best thing I have ever tasted ... as in, ever) for lunch on the first day we worked on her house? And what other woman would offer to cook us a feast (literally) when we come back next year? The answer is not many.

The fact that Katrina could not rob Louisiana of just one such woman is a testament to the reality that Louisiana will be okay. And that nothing, no storm, no disaster, will be able to defeat the soul of a good human being.