World Of Good Wednesday - Dr. Gallup and Mississippi's Forgotten

I found this article and I felt I should share it with you in this Blogburst. If you find it too hard to read on my site you can find it also here.

Doctor refuses to forget Mississippi’s Forgotten ‘The Lord sent us here’

The Kansas City Star

The way she figures it, Beth Gallup had a geographic destiny to wind up in storm-ravaged Mississippi. The daughter of an Army man, she grew up in Hurricane, W.Va., and then moved with her family to Defiance, Ohio. And she admits to a defiant streak, which may help explain how she followed her own path and maybe butted a few heads in taking emergency medical care to hundreds of victims of Hurricane Katrina. She thought she’d be in the region for a week or two.She ended up staying four months.

A trim, athletic, single woman of 49, with red hair and a direct voice, the Johnson County physician was independent and mostly unattached to charitable groups from all over who were also working in the storm’s aftermath. As a result she often operated without a net. She used her instincts as a caregiver and her entrepreneurial drive to help people however she could, spending much of her own money in the process.
Even so, Gallup’s experience in Mississippi opens a window to the chaos that followed the storm and to the enormous need that thousands of victims there still are facing.

Almost immediately after the storm hit, Gallup packed her black Infiniti SUV with medical gear, pharmaceuticals and her little Italian greyhound Beamer. She’d named the dog for Todd Beamer, the “Let’s roll” hero of hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on the day of the 9/11 attacks. “Todd Beamer gave of himself to save people he did not even know,” Gallup says. “It was the ultimate act of courage. He did what he felt he had to do.”

In a similar spirit, Gallup headed to the Gulf Coast. “People were slack-jawed, injured, dazed after what they’d been through,” Gallup says. “These were people who’d lost everything.” Food and drinkable water were scarce. Electricity was out. And prescription medicines had been washed away with their homes.

Gallup began by approaching clumps of people and asking who needed help.

Read the rest of the story here.

The World of Good Wednesday Blogburst exists to bring to light the good that people, churches, organizations, and civic groups do in the world. Today we honor Dr. Beth Gallup her selfless giving in providing medical care to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Gallup for her good work.


If you would like to join the World Of Good Blogburst e-mail Joe at worldofgoodblogroll@yahoo.com.

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