Local hands reach out to victims

Steve Levine may be just an average guy from Shrewsbury. But next week he'll be responsible for a convoy of trucks headed South carrying baby formula and clothing for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

''I think that, as Americans, this is what we do. We did it on 9/11. It's natural instinct to try to reach out and help."

Levine, a 45-year-old real estate agent, said he had collected 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of items by Tuesday and things were ''going great."

He hoped to have his volunteer drivers and donated trucks rolling to Houston or Mobile, Ala., by Monday or Tuesday.

He said it wouldn't be his only project. Levine wants to persuade a ''couple of hundred" of his neighbors to spend their December holidays in New Orleans helping to rebuild homes.

''This is not something that's going to stop this time," he said.

Moved by the devastation in New Orleans, residents across Boston's western suburbs are reaching out to help the survivors of last week's disaster. Many are donating money to charities that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars for relief efforts. Others, like Levine, are mounting their own small campaigns, improvising and hoping to make a difference. And those efforts are as diverse as the people who live in the area.

Local writers, including Mississippi native Alice Hoffman, author of ''Practical Magic," will headline a benefit Sunday at a book store in Newton.

Other participating writers include Tom Perrotta, author of ''Election" and ''Little Children;" Jayne Anne Phillips, author of ''Machine Dreams;" Lois Lowry, author of ''Messenger" and ''The Giver;" Alan Lightman, author of ''Einstein's Dreams;" Elizabeth Searle; Jessica Treadway; and poets Gail Mazur and Sue Standing.

The authors are planning to read and discuss excerpts from their favorite works of Southern literature, said Newtonville Books owner Tim Huggins.

The authors were still planning their selections this week, but Huggins said he expected to hear, among others, the works of Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and contemporary Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux. Plans were underway at presstime for a post-reading party.

The reading is part of the national charity effort, Writers4Relief, spearheaded by San Francisco-based writer Amy Tan, author of ''The Joy Luck Club."

Deborah Donahue of Bolton, director of medical staff services at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, is one of the many residents who have volunteered to go to Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod to help out with the 2,500 victims who are expected to arrive there this week.

''I just felt helpless. I didn't know what I could do. . . . I figured I can do whatever. All I know is, I don't have children at home, and I have this time; I can go."

When Needham fourth-grader Jack Steverman heard Hillside School principal Andrea Wong announce over the intercom that the school would be raising money, he brainstormed a charity drive starring his mother's lemonade.

Ten-year-old Jack, along with his friends, Russell Bramante and Austin Quinn, set up two lemonade stands over Labor Day weekend on Great Plain Avenue and on Nehoiden Street. The trio dropped off $238 at school Tuesday morning in a box marked ''Hurricane Katrina Money," Jack said in a phone conversation during language arts class.

Though Jack has never been to New Orleans, he said he watched the news coverage on television and discussed the tragedy with his parents.

''I thought it was crazy about the damage and people not having houses," Jack said.

More than 50 children and parents raised about $2,000 on Sunday with a bake sale and lemonade stand outside Vinny C's Boylston Liquors. Nancy Cosimini organized the ''Kids Helping Kids" event by sending notices home through the schools. ''We knew our small town could make a big difference if everyone pulled together," she stated in a press release.

Local colleges are not only opening their doors to displaced students but also holding their own fund-raisers to assist evacuees.

Last week, Brandeis University students in Waltham began raising money to help, starting with members of the incoming class of 2009, who ''emptied their pockets" and raised $1,400, said university president Jehuda Reinharz in a letter to the Brandeis community.

Suzanne Harris and some of her Hopkinton neighbors have been talking about hiring a bus to bring a large extended family to town that could be kept together by staying near each other in a few houses in one neighborhood. She was one of dozens of area residents who offered a room for victims via the Internet.

''There doesn't seem to be any one point of organization for this kind of thing -- it feels very ad hoc," Harris said. ''This really shows we're not really prepared for very much."

Her two children, ages 7 and 10, raised $10.75 through a lemonade stand last week.

The tragedy on the Gulf Coast puts everything into perspective, she said.

''The feeling of this is what it's all about -- it's not about money or how big your diamond ring is," Harris said. ''If you can't share a bit of your space, then everything else is kind of meaningless. Except for geography, it could be myself and my family in that same situation."

Lori Karger of Weston took in a Tulane University freshman Monday night just a couple of days after posting an offer of a free room on the Internet.

He started classes at Boston University Tuesday, taking advantage of an offer by the university to allow Tulane students to enroll there for the fall semester. Karger said the student is from Connecticut but wanted a little distance from home so he could get the college experience.

What he didn't know, Karger said, was that he was trading his own Jewish mother for another one.

''I made him call me when he got to his first class. I'm a mother," she said. ''I warned him of that."

She has a guest suite for him and is giving him the codes to her alarm system, but she said she feels fine about that because she met his parents, who drove him to Weston, and she's already joking that he's better about keeping in touch with her than her own son.

Karger's son Craig, 20, is -- or was -- a Tulane sophomore and is staying in Florida now near his sister and some college friends.

''He's pretty depressed," she said. ''I called him yesterday because he got an offer from Tufts. They're offering him housing. He said no. He wanted to be with his friends."

He has started a website, www.savetulane.com, to sell wristbands, with proceeds to go to his school and to relief efforts, she said.

In Bellingham, Jeff Belanger, who runs Ghostvillage.com, is rounding up people he knows who are interested in the supernatural to help out.

''I contacted some of the best-known names in the paranormal community and asked them to donate items for a charity auction to be held on eBay," he wrote in an e-mail to the Globe. ''In just a few short days, I've collected over $1,500 worth of items to auction from all over North America with a lot more on the way."

The auction will start Wednesday and run for a week. Items to be auctioned include ''animal communication consultations" and registration for the Las Vegas Paranormal Conference in October.

In Watertown, resident Kenneth Mirvis said he came up with a ''hare-brained" idea last Friday to help raise money for Katrina victims. A 1970 graduate of Tulane, Mirvis and his wife, Rebecca Rowley, decided to honor the Big Easy by throwing a party.

About 50 friends showed up at Mirvis's house Sunday for a New Orleans-themed brunch featuring eggs sardou, shrimp jambalaya, and red beans and rice with andouille sausage. One friend printed up special T-shirts that read: ''Yeah, You Right N'Awlins!"

Several local businesses donated about $500 in food and beverages, Mirvis said. With the passing of a basket, the brunch raised $3,000.

The Needham Fire Department is sending two firefighters to assist the hurricane victims in Alabama, Louisiana, or Mississippi, said Chief Paul Buckley.

Bill Byrnes, a fire captain and EMT, and Arthur Hopkins, a fire inspector and paramedic, were deployed Monday to Atlanta for training by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency, in collaboration with the International Association of Fire Chiefs, requested 1,000 two-person teams of firefighters to assist the relief effort.

Byrnes and Hopkins learned on Saturday that they were to be deployed. Two days later, they left for Logan Airport with only the belongings that they could fit into backpacks of less than 60 pounds. The length of the assignment is unknown as yet, but they will spend a minimum of one month informing victims about the process for obtaining federal relief, as well as distributing information, taking reports, and providing basic first aid, according to a memo by the US Department of Homeland Security.

But at least three fire chiefs in the area hesitated to send anyone because, they said, it wasn't clear the firefighters would have health coverage if anything happened to them.

In Northborough, Fire Chief David Durgin received the same request, but he's not eager to see any of his staff go. Any firefighter who leaves his full-time job to join one of those teams will no longer be on the town's payroll, unless vacation time is used. The firefighters also will not be covered by town and state death and disability benefits if they get injured or killed while aiding the federal government.

''At the end of the day, is it worth risking your life and the financial stability of your family to go down there?" Durgin said.

Students and staff at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School raised nearly $25,000 to help the Asian tsunami victims this year, and they plan to use the same model to help Katrina victims, said John Ritchie, the Lincoln-Sudbury superintendent and principal. School just started, so plans were incomplete as of Tuesday.

''We are organizing today for what we can do and are thinking not just in terms of raising money, but sending teachers and administrators to wherever might be needed, or accepting students if at all possible," Ritchie wrote in an e-mail message Tuesday.

The Natick school district is putting its efforts behind an idea from Fine and Performing Arts director Chuck Brown, who is looking for faculty and staff members to put on a benefit performance for the public as a fund-raiser.

''People are looking for a way to take action, to do something other than donate on the Turnpike on their way to work, which seems impersonal," Brown said. He's put out the word for teachers who sing, dance, or play an instrument, hoping to put together a show, perhaps in conjunction with the Walnut Hill School, a private performing arts high school in town.

Although he has no personal or professional connection to New Orleans, for Brown, the images of New Orleans underwater are eerily familiar. When he traveled there with his high school band in 1978, he remembers a rainstorm flooding their hotel and students carrying their instruments through waist-high water to get to their buses.

Levine, the Shrewsbury convoy organizer, said that when the drivers get to the city chosen as their destination, they will head to the shelters or turn everything over to the Red Cross. Asked if he was worried about finding a home for all the donations, he said not at all.

He acknowledged that the authorities recommend giving in cash but said dollars stretch further with donated clothing, and it's a little more personal.

Emily Shartin, Erica Noonan, and Matt Viser of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Lauren K. Meade, Jennifer Rosinski, Jennifer Fenn, Lisa Keen, Paul Della Valle, Christina Pazzanese, and Matt McDonald contributed to this report.