Thinking of home
Haitian native reconnects with family
“I think in a crisis, everybody gets united and pulls together,” Nicole Memnon, a native of Haiti, said of the charitable outpouring for her homeland in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake. “To collect that money so quickly is a testament to how generous people can be.”
Memnon, a Long Beach resident and the director of nursing at the Komanoff Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in town, got in touch with her three sisters in Haiti through her nephew in Maryland after the Jan. 12 earthquake. “They spent the nights outside because of the aftershocks,” Memnon said. “It was very troubling for them.”
Memnon lost friends in the quake, but her family, including her cousins, survived. She recalled earthquakes during her childhood, but never of this magnitude.
She and the Rev. Tom Donohoe, a retired priest at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Roman Catholic Church in Point Lookout, visit Haiti at least once a year to bring supplies to a school in Thomassin 25, an area less than 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Ecole Congreganiste St. Vincent de Paul educates about 1,400 children, and it took almost a week for Memnon to get in touch with the nuns who run the school.
According to her contacts in Haiti, the building is still standing, but sustained severe structural damage, and while no one was killed, some of its occupants were injured. “One [student] jumped from the balcony because he didn’t understand what was happened to the ground,” Memnon said.
“I’m sick over it,” Donohoe said of the tragedy. “Here is the poorest country in the world, and now they’re called upon to suffer.”
He expressed a deep love for Haitians, and said he believes they will rebuild. “You knock them down and they keep fighting,” Donohoe said.
Haiti is predominantly Catholic, and many of Long Beach’s Catholic churches have asked parishioners to give donations to aid the relief efforts. “The primary need right now is financial,” said Sean Dolan, director of communications for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which oversees all of the Catholic parishes on the barrier island. “We know that’s how we can help the best — by providing financial resources.”
