Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

Inspecting the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans last week, President Bush remarked, "You've got a pile of stuff here."

Favorite arm chairs, family photographs, teddy bears, frying pans and bicycles piled up all over the Ninth Ward belonged to citizens who were forced, overnight, from their lives.

The unfathomable destruction, along with the outcome of the Katrina hearings, the billions of dollars in aid still locked up in legislative debate and a government evidently out of touch throughout the catastrophe all make it seem like in the Gulf Coast, chaos reigns and hope is hard to find.

In the front office of the Imani Temple No. 70, a small church in Plaquemine, La., there is hope, and progress. The Rev. Marlon Nelson Yarbrough -- who is also an administrative law judge with the state Department of Social Services and a practicing lawyer -- is busy helping to write business plans for the reopening of a day-care center, a print shop, a beauty salon and a graphic arts studio, once thriving small businesses located in New Orleans' Ninth Ward and now nothing short of obliterated.

Writing a business plan in the hope that aid could be found through the standard channels any time soon would be pointless, so, 43-year-old Marlon Yarbrough -- whose family of four took in over 40 people for several weeks after Katrina, and then Rita -- is doing something simple, yet pioneering. He's looking for help for members of his community by reaching out through one-on-one, person-to-person connections.

Cooper Munroe is a writer living in Fox Chapel (coopermunroe@comcast.net). Since Hurricane Katrina, she has operated a Web site that helps evacuees: www.beenthereclearinghouse.com.

It's the one form of recovery that has actually been effective since Katrina struck

I thought I had a pretty good handle on the issues surrounding Katrina until I visited New Orleans earlier this month, guided by the Rev. Yarbrough and his associate Michele Davis.

When we crossed the Danziger Bridge and looked to the left, across the battered roof tops of the Lower Ninth Ward, it was like being kicked in the face. Ms. Davis began to cry. "This is the first time I've seen this," she said.

Of course, like us all, Michele had seen the deadly destruction in the Ninth Ward on television and in the newspapers, and members of her family and a number of friends had lived there. But, until you actually see it, in person, it is hard to grasp how truly awful it is.

Walking the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, a number of things immediately became clear. Since nothing much has been done yet, the cleanup process alone could take years. Saying the mold and other environmental issues are severe is a vast understatement. Rebuilding will take billions and billions of dollars. Repairing the levee system will take billions more.

Then, you have to ask, will this -- could this -- area ever come back? How can homeowners possibly afford building, especially under the new, proposed construction codes? Who will insure these homes and businesses? Give them loans? Work to repair them? Will rebuilt levees keep them safe? Most importantly, when will the financial relief finally make it through the legislative chains of command?

The Ninth Ward, which was a mostly poor to middle-class, predominantly African-American community, is a ghost town. While we were there, cadaver dogs were searching for bodies. The only operational business we passed was a couple selling soft drinks out of the back of their truck. There are little -- if any -- utilities like electricity or running water. The fast food restaurants, banks and department stores are boarded shut.

It takes a lot of optimism to think that anything -- a culture, a routine, a home or a business -- in the most decimated part of town, can be rescued from the overwhelming destruction, not to mention red tape, in New Orleans.

But, the Rev. Yarbrough has started to secure -- through individuals -- in-kind donations and even some seed money, to get the businesses on their feet and rebuilt in, as he says, "geographically non-impacted areas."

As an interim step, the Rev. Yarbrough is helping to rebuild the businesses -- and lives -- where they can operate today. When, or if, New Orleans is ready for them, the Rev. Yarbrough said, the residents and small business owners he knows hope to go home, and, as the people return, so does their way of life.

One business owner Marlon Yarbrough hopes to help is Darrell Edwards.

Before Katrina hit, Mr. Edwards operated a print shop out of the detached garage of his home in the upper Ninth Ward. After being submerged in flood water for close to a month, not much of his business is salvageable, yet he's driving wherever he can -- Mississippi, Texas, Baton Rouge -- to use printing presses to satisfy the remaining contracts he had before Aug. 28, 2005.

"You just have to keep working, you can't stop," he said. Good thing the battery-powered clock that hangs high on his mold-covered shop wall is still keeping time. Ron Peters, director of the Metro Urban Institute at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a native of New Orleans, has known Marlon Yarbrough from birth and thinks that the real rebuilding of New Orleans is in the hands of people like him.

"When starting from scratch to rebuild a community, it is the entrepreneurial spirits like Marlon who do not know defeat. His is the one kind of spirit that is going to find a way to make things happen positively, to pull lives and businesses back together. So often we operate from top-down mode: 'I know what is best for you.' But Marlon sees and knows that the people usually make the best decisions for themselves," Dr. Peters said.

When asked, "Where is the voice of reason?" the Rev. Yarbrough didn't hesitate to answer.

"In the people. The people know what is going on. They don't have a hidden agenda. They are facing hard, concrete facts of life and, yet, they are attempting to rebuild," he said.

Taking the question a bit further, it is hard not to wonder, "Where is the American spirit?"

It certainly is not in the bureaucrats' and politicians' forms, regulations, finger-pointing and disregard.

The American spirit, in its most true and traditional sense, can be found in the former residents of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

Knowing that waiting for assistance to come to them is futile at best, Marlon Yarbrough and others like him prove that any real progress made since the storm has been through individuals, one person connecting with another, finding a way to recover, and converting it, through their own initiative, into action.