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July 21, 2008
Love, from New York
Biloxi Sun-Herald
by Anita Lee
"Kids rule," says a mural at the Coast's latest KaBOOM! playground, built Saturday.
One of those kids would be Michael Carajohn, a 16-year-old from New York whose mother is a plastic surgeon on Fifth Avenue, stepfather Bruce Ratner owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team, and aunt happens to be Fox News political correspondent and Talk Radio maven Ellen Ratner.
Even in this family, Carajohn is no slacker. He accompanied his aunt to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina because the images he saw on television broke his heart.
"I've lived in New York all my life," Carajohn said. "I've never seen anything like that. It was inconceivable to me. I was shocked when I saw it on TV, but when I came down here, I was completely floored."
Carajohn has returned 30 times to help the community. What's more, he worked to get a basketball court built for the children of DeLisle.
On Saturday his aunt, mother and stepfather joined 377 volunteers who built the playground on the grounds of what will be the Marsha Barbour Community Resource Center.
NoLandGrab: Kudos to young Michael, his mother, and even stepfather Bruce for pitching in to help build a new playground along the still-ravaged Mississippi coast. Some Prospect Heights residents might be down there pitching in, too, if they weren't preoccupied with trying to stop Bruce from knocking down and rebuilding their own neighborhood.
Posted by eric at July 21, 2008 3:10 PM