NEW ORLEANS – Master Trooper Chris Maurin brought his two daughters and state trooper girlfriend Karen Billiot to the April 8 First Responders event at the New Orleans Arena hosted by churches in the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.
By Karen L. Willoughby
Managing Editor
NEW ORLEANS – Master Trooper Chris Maurin brought
his two daughters and state trooper girlfriend Karen Billiot to the
April 8 First Responders event at the New Orleans Arena hosted by
churches in the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.
“They invited us to come, and we’ve got other things
to do today [in the area] so for us it worked out good,” Maurin said.
One of the items on the family’s
to-do list was to go to Billiot’s destroyed home to see if anything
might be salvaged.
During Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and the breaching of
levees, Maurin saw his daughters one time in 30 days. His job involved
providing transportation assistance for government officials.
Billiot coordinated housing, meals and other
services for 200 First Responders housed in a school in LaPlace, and
others elsewhere.
It was for people like these that BAGNO churches put
together a six-hour block-party event to say thank you, said Cherry
Blackwell, who coordinated the rally.
Fifteen of the association’s 40 or so functioning
congregations brought a variety of games and activities to the arena,
which recently was the site of a Billy and Franklin Graham New Orleans
evangelistic event.
“I just wanted to tell the First Responders, ‘Thank
you,’” said Steve Meaux, a member at First Baptist of Marrero. “A lot
of these people did not have any communication with their families for
weeks. They sacrificed a lot and I just want to say thank you.”
Maurin was one of those. He didn’t see his daughters at all for three
weeks, and then only for a few hours. It was nearly two months before
he got back to being their dad, he said with an audible catch in his
throat.
One of the day’s events was a donut-eating contest,
with donated Krispy Kremes. Joshua Eaton, pictured above with a bike he
won in another event, lost a tooth in the donut-eating contest.
“It was already loose,” his mother Anna Eaton said
with a grin. The Eaton family, members at Celebration Church, were
having “a good fun day,” she said, though technically her husband, Lew
Eaton, was there to help provide counseling services for any First
Responder who wanted to talk.
“I appreciated what the First Responders did and
wanted to be able to tell them so,” said Ruth Maxie, a member at First
Baptist in Franklin. “And to show them the love of Christ.”