Karl Malone & Hurricane Katrina

You don't hear too many stories about celebrities/athletes/stars who really work hard to make a difference. SportsbyBrooks has a short synopsis and a link to an interesting interview that LA sportscaster Fred Roggin conducted with Karl Malone regarding his efforts to help in the aftermath of the hurricane

"Excerpts from Malone's conversation with Roggin: "I wasn't going to just write a check, and I didn't want to go to New Orleans where all the celebrities were going (to grandstand). I wanted to go where no one was, and that's why we went to Pascagoula.

"We took six million dollars of equipment and most of the guys from my company (Malone Properties). But when we got there, they (federal officials) told us that because we wanted to work for free, we had to go home. That we needed a government ID number or a contract to haul out debris.

"I said to them, 'bullsh--', we took 30 pieces of equipment and traveled nine hours and we're going to clean up some lots before we leave. So I told them 'I'm getting on my truck, now try to get me off.' I had my security guys there and they tried to stop us but they couldn't - and we cleared 115 houses.

"Then they started to help us ... we had 46 trucks trying to keep up with us. I can't describe the scene. People were fighting over a pile of garbage."

Here is is a link to the audio interview. Listen to it, it is worth a moment.

2 comments:

Daled Amos said...

It's always a pleasant surprise to see beyond the 2-dimensional image of people we see just as celebrities.

Jack Steiner said...

Very true.

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