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Date 3-22-06
Contact David Tisdale 601.266.4499
HATTIESBURG—University
of Southern Mississippi graduate student Nichol Armstrong says the
funds Mississippi’s congressional delegation secured for higher
education through Hurricane Katrina relief legislation meant the
difference between whether she stayed in school or postponed graduation.
The Pass Christian
native’s family lost their home in the storm, and with three younger
brothers and a sister, the financial pressures were great after
the storm wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast economy.
“Fortunately,
my family was able to keep their jobs, but work and income were
not what they were before the storm,” said Armstrong, a college
student personnel services major who works in the university’s Office
of Community Service Learning. “We lost our home, our cars, everything.
We’re at the complete start-over point, because we have nothing.”
Mississippi’s
congressional delegation, led by U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, secured
$95 million for higher education as part of $29 billion in Hurricane
Katrina relief spending approved just before the 2005 Christmas
holiday. On Wednesday, Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning
and Southern Miss will host a rally on the university’s Hattiesburg
campus to thank the legislators for their work in securing the funding.
Armstrong is
a first generation college student on her father’s side of the family.
“They’re living their dreams through me,” she said. “They want me
to have a better life than they have had by securing my education,
so this funding has been a real blessing.”
Armstrong, who
serves as a resident hall assistant at Southern Miss, stayed in
Hattiesburg and helped students who remained on campus cope with
the aftereffects of the storm, all the while not knowing whether
her own family survived the storm. It was six days before she talked
with her mother and found out her family had made it.
“We just both
broke down crying, we couldn’t even understand what the other was
saying,” Armstrong said in recounting the phone call with her mother.
“Before that, I was just trying to be strong for the residents (students
living in residence halls) and let them know everything was going
to be okay, because it was hard for them too since we didn’t have
television or radio to know what was happening.”
Tabitha Williams,
a Southern Miss English major from Biloxi, also works as a resident
assistant and, like Armstrong, was in Hattiesburg helping students
ride out Katrina. Like Armstorng, Williams said the funds from the
Katrina legislation helped her to continue attending Southern Miss.
“My family lost
their house, a car and we had two other cars that were damaged by
the storm,” said Williams, who is studying to become an English
teacher. “They were without work for a while, but the bills kept
coming in nevertheless, and they were going through so much stress
from the whole ordeal. So it was really a blessing for me and my
parents to be able to receive this assistance, so I wouldn’t have
to depend solely on them for support.”
Click to enlarge
Nichol Armstrong
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