Scaling the ivory tower

Our daughter spent part of her winter break from Skidmore in New Orleans. Since 2005, she has volunteered to work in the Katrina recovery effort for some part of every school vacation, making her a natural pick for peer leader on her first trip with a Skidmore contingent.

When she first volunteered, as a high school sophomore, her enthusiasm was bound up in the novelty and camaraderie of the experience. She learned to pull nails and mud sheetrock and to feel exhausted after a day of real physical labor. She met people whose lives had been washed away in a day. Everybody in New Orleans had a story to tell, of loss and heartbreak.

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