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March 10, 2007 - The Times-Picayune
"When someone's in need, we have to help them."
By Bruce Nolan
This time last year, as John Graziano approached graduation at the University of Dayton, his path began to diverge from those of many of his classmates.
"Instead of going to job fairs I went to volunteer fairs," he said. "Instead of sending applications and resumes to companies, I sent them to different volunteer service organizations."
The search landed him in New Orleans last August as a lay affiliate of the Marianists, a Catholic religious order working with Catholic Charities in the storm zone.
At 23, Graziano and a roommate live in a rough apartment he built on nights and weekends in the corner of a Westwego warehouse that houses teams of Catholic Charities volunteers.
He clears about $70 a week.
In his first months in New Orleans, Graziano said, he found himself part of small teams gutting houses, sometimes pulling down moldy walls and shoveling debris nearly alone for long stretches. It was a challenge for a young man in a strange city -- for the first time completely on his own.
Graziano and a group of 15 or so like-minded university friends had vowed their senior year to try to live together in a spiritual community dedicated to social justice work. But the idea had to wait a year as members pursued individual service projects. So in those first months in New Orleans, Graziano found himself uncomfortably disconnected from human contact with his spiritual comrades. He also felt the absence of the homeowners he had come to serve.
Graziano got through the arid times with journaling and prayer and by telephoning and e-mailing his friends, including his girlfriend, Emily, who is working with addicted youths in Anchorage, Alaska.
Now he no longer guts houses. In his new job, he looks over damaged properties for Catholic Charities, purchases building materials and delivers them to work sites.
Now, he has more contact with the homeowners he came to help.
"There's less physical work, but more opportunity to sit and talk with homeowners and just hear their stories. Get to know them," he said.
Graziano's scheduled stay in New Orleans ends in July. He said he may stay through August to help his successor with the transition. Then he thinks he'll return to his family home on Long Island, reconnect with his girlfriend on her return from Anchorage, and explore whether their college group can again pursue the goal of living near each other as they work for social justice.
He thinks he might be a teacher.
"The dignity of each human person is there, and it's given to us by God," Graziano said. "It's something that shouldn't be -- and isn't -- negotiable.
"When someone's in need, we have to help them."
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