Hurricane devastation draws professor emeritus to eye of storm

Leonard E. Brown, professor emeritus of geography, and his wife, Lottie, refused to sit back and watch as thousands of Hondurans struggled to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Mitch pummeled the country, killing thousands and leaving thousands of others homeless late last October.

They had to help, so they packed up and headed to Honduras last December as part of the Program for Rural Reconstruction (PRR), a non-governmental Honduran-based relief organization that the Browns and Wittenberg have had a relationship with for the past five years.

The PRR is doing relief work in some 25 villages following Hurricane Mitch.

Under Leonard Brown’s direction and in conjunction with the PRR, several members of the University’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity have previously helped build houses and a village school, and have painted and repaired existing schools during four Habitat for Humanity-sponsored service-learning workcamps in Honduras.

During their time in Honduras from December 1998 until March 1999, Lottie Brown, a registered nurse, served as a nurse-translator for a medical team from the United States and assisted a Honduran doctor with minor surgeries in rural clinics, while Leonard Brown helped prepare a status report on the damaged houses, village water systems and schools.

There were few deaths in the villages served by the PRR, but there was extensive damage to the roads and houses, Leonard Brown explained.

Most of the villages had piped water systems, which used PVC tubing to transport water from the capped springs above the villages, and those systems were severely damaged and in some cases completely destroyed by earth slides mudflows, Brown wrote in a correspondence from Honduras.

Bridges were destroyed, and several major highways were also closed. In addition, the hurricane forced a number of Hondurans to find temporary housing. Many also lost all of their stored grains as a result of water damage.

“I certainly did not anticipate spending my first year of retirement assisting with relief work after a disaster,” said Brown, “but it has clearly helped me avoid the ‘what do I do after Wittenberg.’”

The Browns have lived in Springfield for 27 years. Lottie is a graduate of the Clark State nursing program, and Leonard taught at Wittenberg for 27 years before retiring in 1998. He continues to serve as a consultant to the PRR.