Bush Praises College Students in Storm-Ravaged Mississippi

President Bush, on his 10th visit to the state since Hurricane Katrina hit in August, told 1,460 graduates of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College on Thursday that their perseverance was an inspiration.

“You have shown a resilience more powerful than any storm,” he said. “You continued your studies in classrooms with crumbling walls. You lost homes and slept in tents near campus to finish courses. You cleared debris during the day and then went to class at night.”

Almost a third of the school’s 10,500 students dropped out, school officials said, and the homes of about 200 staff and faculty members were destroyed. But the college reopened 17 days after Katrina made landfall.

“This has been an unprecedented year in the life of our college and in the lives of our students,” said college President Willis Lott, who is not related to the state’s Republican senator, Trent Lott. “It’s a proud moment.”

When Bush arrived here Thursday, as the first president to give a commencement address at a community college, the damage from Katrina was still evident.

Restoration efforts are continuing at Mississippi Coast Coliseum, gutted when winds and 5 feet of water destroyed its interior. But the building served as a proud venue for the ceremony, attended by 7,000 relatives and friends of the graduates. All that remained of a nearby motel -- which officials said was hit by a riverboat casino that had been moored in the Gulf of Mexico -- was its foundation. The area where expensive beach homes stood was a vacant landscape dotted by a few surviving oak trees.

“By your determination to reach this day, you have sent a message to the world: Mississippi is coming back, and it will be better than ever before,” Bush said.

As the president was speaking in Biloxi, his wife, Laura, addressed graduates of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. She urged them to “dedicate a vacation to recovery” before they started jobs or graduate school.

“Travel to the Gulf Coast and help with the reconstruction,” or volunteer wherever help is needed around the world, she said.

The president, calling the renewal of Louisiana and Mississippi “one of the largest rebuilding efforts the world has ever seen,” pledged to return “to see beautiful houses with children playing in the yards.”

Bush spoke of the opportunities to rebuild and the faith that had been needed to withstand Katrina.

“In these trying months, we have been aided by a power that lightens our struggles and reveals our hidden strength,” he said. “We can never know God’s plan, but we can trust in his wisdom and in his grace.”

To rousing applause, Bush added, “We can be certain that with his help, the great state of Mississippi will rise again.”