Tulsa's Marquette Catholic School helps an evacuee family

Katrina's smallest victims haven't escaped the heartbreak of leaving their homes and sometimes their families behind. One of those families is in Tulsa. <br/><br/>When administrators at Marquette

Thursday, September 8th 2005, 4:06 pm

By: News On 6

Katrina's smallest victims haven't escaped the heartbreak of leaving their homes and sometimes their families behind. One of those families is in Tulsa.

When administrators at Marquette Catholic School in Tulsa got word there were school age children in the community, without clothes, a home, or their mother, they knew they had to help.

News on 6 anchor Terry Hood says Dorothy Martin is traveling between Camp Gruber where her son and a nephew are, and Saint Francis in Tulsa after another nephew had to be hospitalized.

Both Martin's husband, and her sister - her nephew's mother - were left behind. That's why a Catholic parish at Christ the King took a second collection to go to hurricane victims.

A big percentage of Marquette's annual school fundraiser will also go to help. The classes corresponding to the boys who have been evacuated to Oklahoma are collecting clothes for them to wear. And the school has offered an invitation to enroll the boys at their earliest convenience. But the best gifts have been coming from students.

Marquette Principal John Kraus: "We have a boy whose grandparents took him out and gave him a special gift of $20, and he brought that in to the school office, wanted to give that to the victims. Later, we were talking to his mother, and she said, 'I didn't know he did that with his money.'"

Marquette 8th grader Phillip Coman: "Some people just looked at us really weird and just drove off, but like a lady that we saw, she gave us like a cookie jar that big of just like change and stuff."

Phillip is one of a group of boys who took fundraising to another level.