Positivity: Bob Ford Revisited
The first Positivity entry last week focused on Bob Ford’s involvement in putting on the wedding of New Orleans evacuees Joseph Kirsh and Tenisha Williams. It turns out that the wedding story only scratches the surface of what Mr. Ford has done:
Looking back, Bob Ford sees it as a possible touch of divine intervention: the pine tree that Hurricane Katrina sent plunging through his roof narrowly missed him.
But the real miracle, he said, happened the night before. When a gospel-music concert he was catering drew a meager crowd because of the coming storm, Mr. Ford and his wife, Jocelyn, decided to drop off the leftover turkey legs and corn-on-the-cob at the Mississippi Coliseum here, where 1,200 evacuees were already huddled.
There, he said, he was transfixed - and transformed - by one man’s story.
“He was a middle-aged white guy, about 5-8 and rough-looking because he hadn’t shaved in a while,” said Mr. Ford, 43. “He told me he’d walked out of New Orleans, hadn’t gotten a ride until he reached the Mississippi border, and hadn’t eaten in two days.
“That blew my mind, and I told myself, ‘I’m in this for the long haul.’ ”
Before the storm, Mr. Ford, a tall, panther-slim man, was known here as a golf-course owner, caterer and role model for young African-American entrepreneurs. That résumé began to take on a new dimension the day the hurricane arrived, when the Fords returned to the coliseum with their two teenagers and Joe Fulton, superintendent of the golf course, loaded down with food from their company’s freezer.
They cooked all day for the swelling crowd, even as winds knocked out power throughout the city. When provisions ran short, Mr. Ford appeared on local television to plead for donations.
Since then, he and the passionate volunteers he has attracted have served free hot lunches and dinners to crowds that have run as high as 1,700. Dismayed by the doughnuts and drink boxes that the Red Cross was calling breakfast, they got up at 5 a.m. on Tuesday and began doling out eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, grits and coffee.
….. Mr. Ford has lined up jobs and car repairs, and entertainment for the hundreds of children in the shelter. Last Saturday, he and his troops organized a free wedding ceremony and reception for a young couple who were supposed to exchange vows in New Orleans on the day the hurricane hit. The bride, the groom and 18 of their relatives took up temporary residence this week in the Ford home, 18 miles east of here in Brandon,
