Volunteers Sought to Attend Door County Gulf Coast Relief Fund Reunion Party

If you were one of the more than 250 volunteers who traveled to Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help out the residents of Hancock County as part of the Door County Gulf Coast Relief Fund, or one of the many who donated money or supplies, Pete D’Amico wants you to know about the Door County Gulf Coast Relief Fund Reunion Party to be held on Aug. 17, 6 pm, at Beantown Campground, Baileys Harbor, featuring a shrimp boil by the Broke Spoke Cookin’ Team.

“I’ve got numbers for a lot of volunteers, but a lot of them don’t have the same telephone numbers they did then,” said D’Amico, who organized the relief fund effort, which included 25 trips to the devastated coastal area.

“Hancock County got a direct hit by the hurricane. A lot of the homes were either damaged or gone entirely. Some of these areas were totally decimated,” D’Amico said. “Everybody was in need, but we intended to help the neediest of the needy. In those 25 trips, we were able to help 55 families. We made quite a footprint down there.”

And now those folks in Mississippi say it’s time for payback.

“A couple of the families we did work for are coming up and they want to thank the volunteers. We thought we would do this as a little reunion thing,” D’Amico said.

D’Amico said one of the families is Stevie and Mabel Haas of the Broke Spoke in Kiln, Miss.

“They sort of served as the host family when we were down there. Stevie did a lot of cooking for us,” D’Amico said. “So he’s coming to do a shrimp boil for the volunteers.”

D’Amico wants to make sure as many volunteers get the word as possible, so pass it on. And, he adds, bring a cooler because it sounds like there will be some Gulf Coast shrimp for the volunteers who show up.