For Steve Ganz and Larry Rosen, it was a road trip buddy movie come to life.
Late last month, the two Brandeis Hillel Day School dads drove a 26-foot Penske rental truck from San Francisco to San Antonio. Loaded in the back, 1,100 boxes of supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims.
“The enthusiasm of our kids was just overwhelming,” says Ganz, who cooked up the idea after hearing about a Walnut Creek restaurant owner who similarly rented a truck, filled it with relief supplies and made a beeline to the Lone Star State.
“We were looking for a way to make what happened in New Orleans real for our children,” says Chaim Heller, the Brandeis Hillel interim head of school. “We had universal involvement; there wasn’t a family that wasn’t engaged.”
For most of September, Brandeis Hillel faculty, students and their families from both the Marin and San Francisco campuses collected items like canned foods, bottled water, batteries, flashlights, formula and baby food, bedding, personal hygiene kits and school supplies.
On Sept. 23, Ganz and Rosen, both of San Francisco, pulled up in the rental truck and together with the students packed the truck. Says Heller: “We asked the children to help load [the truck] to have the experience of actually lifting and carrying.
How were Ganz and Rosen able to take off the better part of a week to make the trek? “I do Web design consulting from home,” says Ganz. “I have a flexible schedule. So does Larry, who is a real estate broker. I figured he’d be a good one to ask [to come along].”
The two headed south down I-5, then turned east, taking four days to cross through Arizona, New Mexico and southeastern Texas. It was like a page from a Jack Kerouac novel, except Ganz and Rosen had a laptop and wireless Internet to keep a log of their journey and e-mail the details back home.
The duo’s blog journal makes for an entertaining read, recounting their adventures (it’s available online at www.bhdsrelief.com). From the exotic fare of Del Taco drive-thru takeout lunches to the saguaro cactus forest of Tucson, Ariz., from the sleazy truck stops of Phoenix to the Texan trailer parks of El Paso, Ganz and Rosen took it all in and wrote it all down.
The blog was updated several times daily, with additions to the Web site continuously projected on a screen at the Brandeis Hilel campus. “People were gathering in the tech labs to talk about this trip,” says Heller. “It became lunchtime conversation.”
Four days and 1,700 miles after it began, the journey ended at San Antonio’s Eleanor
Kolitz Academy and Jewish Community Center, where 39 middle school students from the academy helped Ganz and Rosen unload the truck. The occasion was deemed enough of a big deal to bring out a reporter from San Antonio’s Jewish newspaper.
After the de rigueur tour of the Alamo (“It was much smaller than I expected,” says Ganz), the two departed San Antonio for home, this time via a much faster jetliner.
As gratifying as the project has been to the participants, most realize the effort to assist victims of the hurricane will take many more trucks, many more years.
“It feels like a drop in the bucket,” says Ganz, “but I hope this spirit will continue, and not stop with [Hurricanes] Katrina and Rita. I hope our school will stay involved.”
Heller says the school will do so. Ever since the hurricane hit, Brandeis Hillel has been aiding in relocation and absorption of Gulf Coast evacuees.
“We’re still absorbing families,” he says. “And the door is still wide open.”