by Amanda J. Smith, Rhino Entertainment Company

Volunteering with HandsOn New Orleans (HONO) these last few years has been a profound and humbling experience for me.

It has literally changed my view of the world, my place in it and how I relate to others. One might surmise that it’s the simple act of volunteering that did it, or the magnitude of the Katrina tragedy, but it’s more than that.

As much as we all strive to “be the change” we seek in the world, it’s hard for volunteers to put that into practice without some kind of infrastructure or support.

As new volunteers, we need good leaders, otherwise our efforts get squandered, misdirected or wasted in bureaucratic red tape. I’ve had that experience before, of spinning my wheels, and ultimately gave up in frustration.

What a waste!

In my life at least, HONO has become the catalyst that makes my volunteer efforts & energies actually productive and useful to others.

Amazingly, they have found ways to harness a world of diverse volunteers, empower us, and direct our best energies towards  tangible service. That’s one of the many reasons why HONO is so incredibly unique and why I, like so many others, find the experience so rewarding that we keep returning to volunteer with them again and again and again.

“Gutting is fun!” Actually, we all know that it is a heartbreaking job, tempered only by the cathartic relief of exhausting physical labor, and the knowledge that we are actually helping someone clear a space for their future, and dreams for a new beginning.

That’s why a big team of LA-based Rhino Records employees signed up for a project called “Miss Patricia’s Gut” on the very first day we arrived to volunteer at HONO in 2006.

None of us knew anything about the project, or Miss Patricia, we just went where HONO directed us.

As we dug into the work, our HONO project leader, shared what he knew about the project, that the house had belonged to the late Professor Longhair, a legendary New Orleans R&B/jazz pianist, and had been passed down to his daughter, Miss Patricia Byrd, who was living there with her son at the time Katrina hit.

Photo by Lindsay Shannon

Being obsessive music geeks, we knew exactly who Professor Longhair was!

Our company had actually released records & CDs by the legendary musician.

His legacy was already intertwined with our own lives through both music and the business of selling music.

Being sent to work on his family home was a random assignment, but we felt an instant personal connection through the shared love of music.

Someone with a BlackBerry sent an email to our co-workers back in LA, and within hours, the whole Rhino company felt connected to the project and Miss Patricia as well.

That afternoon, Miss Patricia & her young son stopped by the house to meet us in person.

Someone had told her we were from Rhino – she had received royalty checks from our company over the years and was touched by the synchronicity of our volunteer involvement.

She told us stories about her father, growing up in this home with him, and that “he could make a piano walk.”

She shared the harrowing stories of her own experiences during the storm and evacuation to the Convention Center.

In the process of gutting her house, we had carefully salvaged several Professor Longhair posters, which Miss Patricia graciously gave to us to keep and display in Rhino’s corporate offices when we left.

It’s hard to explain the richness of these interactions in words, and how bearing witness to someone else’s tragedy can feel like an honor, but it does.

It’s our shared humanity and our connection to each other at this most basic level that allows us to really open up & be there for each other.

It’s why HONO works so well, and why we all keep coming back.