FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Marsha Barbour's Speech to Attendees of the Resource Center Dedication

Feels Like Home
Courtesy of The Sea Coast Echo, by Geoff Belcher

Waveland resident Mimi Sherrouse this week got just about the best birthday present she could ask for – a new home. On Monday – just a day before her 83rd birthday – Sherrouse was surrounded by family, friends, MEMA officials and Mississippi's First Lady Marsha Barbour to help dedicate her new Mississippi Cottage. "This is just fantastic," Sherrouse, who volunteers five days a week at Lagniappe Church, said Monday. "It feels like home."

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her Oak Blvd. home on Aug. 29, 2005, Sherrouse went to live temporarily with one of her daughters in Oak Ridge, Tenn. She's been living in a FEMA trailer at the former site of her home since May 2006. Sherrouse with her daughter Trista Neilson of Orlando.

While she was happy to have the tin roof over her head, she said, she was ready for a little more room to move.

"It's so nice to have a house you don't have to move out of in high winds," Sherrouse said. "We have a full oven. We have much more space ... it's a dream come true."

"This is a great solution for the alternative housing program," Barbour said Monday. "It gives everybody a little hope, a little inspiration, and helps bring the community back, and I'm really happy for all concerned."

Sherrouse is the first Waveland resident to get one of the Mississippi cottages in what Mayor Tommy Longo calls a "blitz," an combined effort by the city, the Governor's Office for Recovery and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to find better housing for the city's residents within the next 30 days.

It's also the first cottage MEMA has placed that was manufactured by Lexington Homes, a Mississippi company that the agency has contracted with to put up about 200 cottages Coast-wide. Sherrouse's new home is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

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