RIGHT ON ‘QUE FOR HELPING OUR NEIGHBORS IN NEED We worked with our supplier partners to bring food, funds and hands-on assistance to help those struggling after the storm. Thank you to the following for joining us in our relief efforts. Astor Chocolate • Bakerly •Back to Nature • Backers • B&G Foods • Bear Creek • Big Sky • Blue Runner • Bono USA • Camerican • Capital City Produce • Clement Foods • Coca-Cola • Community Coffee • Cooks BBQ • Crescent Crown • Del Grosso • DeLallo • Dole • Drink Oxygen Water • Drink Vibi+ • Else Nutrition • Falcon Rice • Farm Ridge Farm • Fever Tree Beverages • Fillo’s Beans • Frito Lay • 4 Sisters Rice • GFI • Harvest Best • Icco • Johnson & Johnson • Kellogg’s• La Galvalina •LA Great Water • Lehi Valley • LH Hayward • Camelia Beans • Melissa’s Produce • Nabisco • Olds Fitzgerald Products • Overseas Trading • Pepsi • Red Gold • Robinson Fresh • Schuman Farms • Seneca • The Stuter Co. • Sunkist • Tampico • Trophy Nut • Two Rivers • Zapp’s • Zyn FOR FEEDING OUR NEIGHBORS IN NEED We want to thank these charities, businesses, groups and individuals who have so generously donated food and meals to our neighbors in need. The Cajun Ninja •Cinco Baptist Church • Community Coffee • The Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux • Joe Impastato • Jambalaya Girl • The Salvation Army USA •Johnsonville BBQ Big Taste Grill • Louisiana Fish Fry Products • Moonlight Marine Fabrication, LLC • ResQue • Sideline Pass • Slo-Melt Ice • Stale Kracker • Tony Chachere’s • ZydeGeaux’s 5 8 R O U S E S N OV E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 20 21
By David W. Brown
S
ince Hurricane Ida ravaged remote Louisiana towns and communities, a disaster recovery group called ResQue has worked tirelessly to feed community members and utility workers in devastated, poorly populated areas.
“I think that the heart and soul of this country is in our smaller communities,” said Brad Gottsegen, who founded ResQue in 2016. “Those communities are the easiest to forget about, particularly after a storm. It’s like they fall off the radar. There’s not much in the way of industry and business going on in a lot of these communities, and so people forget that they exist.” But the people, he said, are still there, and their struggles are real. The group goes into these communities with trailers, grills, tables, chairs, and tents
to set up food distribution sites. They not only feed people but also strike up conversations with them and help them open up. They are, in other words, doing more than feeding people — they are helping build communities. Gottsegen first organized the program after seeing the severe flooding that devastated Baton Rouge and neighboring Livingston Parish. As a member of a pediatric cancer fundraising group called Hogs for the Cause for more than a decade, he knew he could leverage his connections to help those in need long before other relief organizations could mobilize a response. “I had a whole group of friends who have the knowledge and capacity to cook large amounts of food,” he said. “I made a couple of calls, and not surprisingly, within a matter of an hour had forty volunteers who pledged to provide food, cook food, and serve food in Baton Rouge.” They fed five thousand people during a single weekend, including flood victims,
