Giving Back: GL Cast Visits The Gulf Coast
For 70 years, GUIDING LIGHT has championed helping those in need, so it was no surprise when, as part of the show’s anniversary blitz, the cast and crew flew down to the Gulf Coast to spend an entire week alongside dozens of full-time volunteers from the Hands On Network to help rebuild homes ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Cast members were eager to talk about their personal experiences after returning home. Here’s what they had to tell Digest.The GL cast and crew were ready and raring to get to work as soon as they landed in Biloxi, Mississippi. After a brief training session from the handy Hands On crew, they split up into teams at three different houses that were already in various stages of reconstruction. Crystal Chappell (Olivia) explained: “I worked in the framing house. We like to call it the ‘stud house’ with the beams, the studs and then we had some very studly people. You can appreciate all the studs!” 
Whether installing insulation in the “frame house” or adding cute interior touches to the “finish house,” everyone on board was delighted to not only contribute to a great cause, but also pick up a set of new skills. “Doing something completely unrelated to what we do … I just saw people so happy, including myself,” Chappell mused. “It’s a different kind of joy that only comes from working together like that to do something for someone else. It sounds a little corny and clichéd, but it really was. There’s something brilliant about doing manual labor.” Michelle Ray Smith (Ava) added, “I worked on the Sheetrock, in a house where we did the drywall. It was extremely rewarding to see everything develop and to see walls go up and see the structure grow. It was pretty wild. I was able to identify with a part of my life that I really miss. I miss getting dirty and going out and building things and making things.”
Several cast members bunked together at the Hands On barracks-style base camp, which was quite a change from life back in New York, but Smith welcomed it. “Outside, there were a couple of showers that were built out of wood and stuff. You jump in there and you take a shower outside in nature,” she explained. “You could only take a four-and-a-half-minute shower because everyone had to share the water. It was just really very bare bones, like a summer camp sort of thing, but I loved it!”From initial shock to utter disbelief, the massive damage still left from the storm provoked a range of emotion for many when they toured the rest of Biloxi and the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Robert Newman (Josh) chose to stay an additional four days to help out after the rest of the crew returned home. “I went to New Orleans and spent about an hour with the Hands On people there and then I drove around the Ninth Ward by myself on a very rainy day and that was just excruciating,” he said. “It just kills you. It’s crazy. It’s like walking through some kind of different moonscape or something. It just blows your mind. And you’re 50 yards away from the levee that broke and you know that it’s been patched, but it still could do the same thing. Houses sideways, cars upside down … I mean it’s just crazy.”
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