FOR RELEASE: Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Nursing Student Organizes Katrina Memorial at Union
Scott Flanagin/UA Division of Student Affairs
Morgan Harper releases balloons during the Hurricane Katrina Day Memorial on Tuesday, Aug. 29, outside the Arkansas Union.
We want to let the UA community know how thankful the students of the Gulf Coast are for all the provisions you made for us. — Morgan Harper
Displaced Students Remember Victims, Thank University Community for Welcoming Them
Morgan Harper
Morgan Harper, one of 66 students who came to the University of Arkansas last year after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region, organized the Hurricane Katrina Day Memorial on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of the hurricane, as a way of saying thank you for assistance the students received and to remember the storm's victims.
Harper and her roommate, Shameya Bell, enrolled in the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing and have both become engaged since moving to Fayetteville. Harper plans to graduate next May and Bell this December. Dawn Medley, director of admissions, described the phone call she received last year from a frightened Harper who said she needed to go to school and asked whether Medley could help her. The admissions office staff worked through Labor Day weekend, Medley said, to enroll the displaced students, and she met Harper, Bell and some members of Harper's family at a local restaurant on their arrival in Fayetteville, taking them home with her for a few days.
UA Chancellor John White also spoke at the ceremony, along with Johnetta Cross Brazzell, vice chancellor for student affairs, and Jared Hueter, an architecture student in a spring 2007 class that will undertake a design/build project to be installed in New Orleans.
"We want to let the UA community know how thankful the students of the Gulf Coast are for all the provisions you made for us," Harper told the crowd. "When we came here, we were given housing, bedding, clothes. Classmates I never met before came up to me with gift cards. Not only did they ask if I needed anything, they asked how my family was. That meant so much. Saying thank you can't really express my feelings. You all have been a true blessing."
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Contact:
Heidi Stambuck, director of communications
College of Education and Health Professions
(479) 575-3138, stambuck@uark.edu