Faces of Green Light: Mr. Mitchell shares his story

On a recent April afternoon, Green Light’s Blue Six Americorps team installed light bulbs in the Mitchell home. Katherine and Suzie listened carefully as Mr. Mitchell told his story. 

Mr. Mitchell lives in a quiet neighborhood in Slidell, right next door to his son. “Most of the time, I wish he lived further away,” he joked. Mr. Mitchell raised fifteen children, but he explained that they weren’t all in the house at the same time. “They might not even all be mine!” With the help of his family and the local church, he has resettled in the home his children grew up in.

Mr Mitchell spent fifteen days in his son’s home as he waited for relief during Hurricane Katrina. “It felt like fifteen years,” he said. He survived on canned food and bottled water that he and his son, who was in Georgia at the time, had stocked in case of an emergency. Mr. Mitchell had swum from his own home to his son’s as the water rose to chest level.

As they walked through Mr. Mitchell’s home installing CFLs, the Americorps volunteers noticed that several of his chairs had been glued together, a symbol of his efforts to rebuild after the storm. The water level is still visible as a dark line on the white wall of his shed, seven feet off the ground. He salvaged a fully-submerged bicycle after the storm, one of his favorite possessions. The rusty stool he lent Blue Six to change his bulbs was also saved from his damaged home after his two-week ordeal during the hurricane.

Blue Six installed 24 CFLs in Mr. Mitchell’s home, which will save him $1104 over the life of the bulbs, and reduce his CO2 footprint by 10728 lbs.