Building Character by Rebuilding Lives

Instead of a bus ride to a ski trip, Wakefield School players are on their way to the airport, then to New Orleans to help with post-Katrina rebuilding. (Photos By By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

Wakefield School prides itself on students who take two periods of English each day, a nationally recognized literary magazine and an annual graduating class of independent thinkers.

Tearing down walls, ripping out insulation and spraying studs with mold deterrent? Not in the brochure of the school in Virginia horse country, about 40 miles west of Washington, which costs $12,000 to $16,000 annually to attend.

So you'll have to forgive the Wakefield boys' basketball players for not knowing how they would react, emotionally or physically, to the task they are undertaking as you read this.

The Owls decided to forgo the school's traditional Ski Week to travel to New Orleans this week to gut houses as part of the rebuilding efforts from Hurricane Katrina. They traded white slopes for dashed hopes.

A few days before flying out, they were both eager and skittish about their endeavor.

"I'm not ready for it," team manager Morgan Vandermast said with a nervous laugh. "I know I've seen nothing compared to what we're going to see. It's just out of my comfort zone."

"I've seen some of the pictures that my parents took, and it looks devastating, but I think once we get down there, it's really going to hit a bunch of guys how bad this is," said junior Ross Ozburn, whose parents volunteered in New Orleans last fall for their 25th wedding anniversary. "It's going to be one of those moments that really hits you like how much life means to you and how good we have it here."

For sure, this isn't Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia, where many of the school's students are spending the week after exams. It's safe to assume that the Wakefield students there did not pack dust masks or update their tetanus shots before leaving town.

And it's safe to assume that the lodge accommodations will be a bit more relaxing than the 40 bunk beds at Trinity Christian Community, which is hosting the Owls and a school contingent from Kennebunkport, Maine, for the week. The groups are sharing meals and rooms with six full-time volunteers.

It is not uncommon for school groups to volunteer, said Sandy Brown, volunteer coordinator at Trinity, but this is the first athletic team she can recall staying at the facility.

The Wakefield players are helping in the Hollygrove section of New Orleans, a working-class neighborhood on the western fringe of the city, where the average annual income in 2000 was $30,659 -- or about two years' worth of schooling for the pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade set at Wakefield.

A spokeswoman for the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center said that most Hollygrove homes took in four to eight feet of water; according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, two feet of water or more classifies a home as "severely" damaged.