O ne man’s vison became a reality for many
Chef Gary LeBlanc After 35 years in the hotel restaurant business, Chef Gary LeBlanc unexpectedly discovered his passion while volunteering during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As he describes it, he watched from his television in Portsmouth, Virginia as the hurricane hit his hometown of New Orleans. Seeing people he recognized standing on overpasses in hopes being rescued and watching the report of his daughter’s neighbor- hood, completely underwater, struck him in a way nothing had before. Immediately, he knew he had to help.
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Gary volunteered with every agency he could find to do food service for those displaced by the hurricane. What he witnessed during his short-term volunteer experience compelled him to be a part of lasting impact in the field of disaster relief and ultimately changed the entire trajectory of his life. He describes it like this: Katrina created a chaos that our country had never seen before: Americans fighting for their lives, city wide devastation, children without water and a public failure of our federal and state govern- ments to respond. The community was in ruins and recovery seemed out of reach. It was there in the midst of the chaos that I realized the incredible difference that a hot meal can make, and at the same time, I was struck by the lack of care put into the relief meals. In Cajun culture, food is love, and Gary grew up watching his Cajun grandmothers cook for every occasion and often for no reason at all. The contrast between his childhood experience and the food he saw being served to the victims of Hurricane Katrina shocked him. There was no love or passion being put into the meals. It was all about fast, cheap and mass quantity.
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