Losing it all, but feeling richer

On a clear day, 81-year-old Jesse Lennep claims he can see the Gulf of Mexico from his two-story, 100-year-old home on the shore of Krebs Lake in Pascagoula, Miss. Shrimp boats regularly chug past his front porch.

After Hurricane Katrina, Lennep lost his wife of 53 years to kidney failure. The storm weakened her already fragile health, he says. Medical problems, subsequent hospital bills and lost business after Katrina depleted his finances. Two of his children and one grandchild live in FEMA trailers behind his property — “FEMA trailer No. 1 and FEMA trailer No. 2,” Lennep calls them.

But Lennep calls the past year the happiest of his life. Pascagoula is rebuilding, and so is he.

“God has been real good to me,” he said. “I’m thankful every day for it.”

Tile by tile, volunteers sponsored by Palm Harvest Church in Costa Mesa will give back Lennep’s daughter and granddaughter their home this week. The two-bedroom, storm-damaged apartment sits on Lennep’s property behind the main house.

“The most rewarding part is how appreciative people are,” said Palm Harvest volunteer Carolyn Marsh, of Costa Mesa. Marsh spent most of Wednesday behind a table saw, cutting pieces of ceramic tile.

The volunteer team, made up of members of Palm Harvest and other churches from around Orange County, spent about eight hours Wednesday moving furniture, tearing out warped linoleum and laying tile.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am. This is going to totally change my life and give my daughter a better life,” Lennep’s daughter, Lee Ann Lennep said. “We’ve been truly amazed by how kind people have been. Words cannot express.”

Jesse Lennep was sitting on his front porch two years ago as the mighty winds of Hurricane Katrina threatened to topple the ancient oak trees in his front lawn. The gulf waters came within five feet of his front door as he looked on.

Lennep’s first wife of more than 50 years was confined to a hospital bed in the back of the house on the brink of kidney failure during the storm. She died a few months later.

Lennep’s home was spared, but high winds blew the gulf waters through every heating vent, crevice, crack and duct of the small two-bedroom apartment where Lee Ann and 11-year-old granddaughter Megan lived.

Lee Ann has lupus, a disease that makes her extremely sensitive to allergens like the persistent mildew that plagued most Pascagoula houses after Katrina.

“It’s been a rough couple of years,” she said. “The storm came, and then we lost my mother. It’s been tough.”

Her sensitivity to allergens made it impossible for she and her daughter to move back into the apartment until a new floor was installed, she said. Jesse says he never received “a dime of insurance money” on the home.

“Everyone is working together so well together,” said volunteer Francine Pace, of Anaheim. Pace, a semi-retired teacher, spent most of Wednesday grouting and laying tile in Lee Ann Lennep’s daughter’s bedroom. “I was shocked when I heard that people were still out of their houses two years after the hurricane. This is not acceptable.”

While Jesse Lennep has less money since the storm, he said he feels he is richer in other ways than ever before.

Since the storm, the Lennep family’s main house has a fresh coat of white paint, courtesy of a church group from New York. The group of volunteers from Costa Mesa and surrounding communities in Orange County plan to have the apartment tiled and ready to move into by this weekend.

“This will help my daughter so much,” Jesse Lennep said. “I am a very lucky man.”

Jesse Lennep and his new wife, Myrtie Mae Lennep, celebrated their first wedding anniversary last weekend. The two were childhood friends who did not see each other for 60 years until after Katrina. The couple was reunited after Jesse Lennep visited his sister in Mobile, Ala. and discovered she was still in touch with Myrtie Mae.

Jesse Lennep gave Myrtie Mae two dozen long-stem red roses for their first anniversary last week, which he stuck in a 140-year-old Mason jar.

“We’re not feeling victim-y here,” said one of Jesse Lennep’s two sons, Mitch Lennep, who lost his house and most of his possessions.

His insurance company paid him $14,000 for a house, two cars and everything he owned. “We’re just trying to move past all this if it hadn’t been for all the church groups, we’d still be down to the studs.”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.