Sophomore biology major George Denny was working as a car mechanic in Chicago when the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina first started appearing on television screens across the country. Denny said one of the things that struck him the most was the fact that almost immediately there were a number of Canadian firefighters there to help, yet the U.S. government was still yet to take any decisive action. He had graduated high school a year before, and said that because he didn’t have a specific aim for his life at the moment, he called up the Red Cross.
“I figured, I’m not doing anything with my life, I might as well get down there and help as many as I can,” he said.
Three days later, he was on a plane to begin work in New Orleans, arriving only five days after Katrina did.
For the next month, Denny delivered much needed supplies to different areas around New Orleans, living in the back of a rental U-Haul truck at the naval base in Gulf Port, Miss.
Though he had the option of sleeping in a large shelter set up by the Red Cross, he chose the U-Haul simply because there were so many people crammed into the shelter.
“It was like a war zone,” he said. “It was hard to reconcile the fact that it was still in the U.S. . It seemed like something that couldn’t have happened [here].”
Paired with a pastor, Denny and his partner came up with a plan to visit each church in each area in order to speak with the church’s leader and determine who needed aid the most.
Denny said this ended up being more efficient in getting supplies faster to those who were most desperate for aid, rather than trying to go to each individual person or house.
While volunteering in New Orleans, Denny was almost shot, and he also met Canadian actor Ryan Gosling, whom he said had driven straight to Louisiana after finding out about the hurricane damage and was living in a Buddhist temple.
He said the experience “definitely added some drive to my life, [and] made me really want to help people.” He decided to pursue becoming an EMT, and returned to Chicago to work in ambulances.
From there, he started school at Loyola University in Chicago, before transferring to Saint Louis University to be with his fiancée, who is attending Law School at Washington University in St. Louis.
As for the future, Denny is considering going to medical school, or also following the MD Ph.D. route, though he notes that the latter will require another 13 years of school. Whichever way he goes, he attributes his experience in New Orleans to making him want to go back to school.
“I went down there and kind of fell in love with helping people,” he said.
