Local psychologist helps hurricane victims deal with unseen scars amid disruptions

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

There hasn’t been a day here I haven’t cried, mostly giving hugs to people,” said Dr. Jeffrey Spector, speaking from Antioch Baptist Church in Hazelhurst, Miss., on a cell phone provided by the Red Cross.

For two weeks, the West Orange psychologist has been caring for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Many are confronting the realization, as they begin returning to their homes, that they have nothing to return to. Like the woman who broke down the swollen door of her home only to find it had become a snake’s nest, the entire ground floor covered by writhing black reptiles. Or the 70-year-old retiree who found his house knocked off its foundation, sitting in the middle of an intersection with a tree rammed through the carport. “What is he supposed to do? Where is he supposed to go?” asked Spector.

“It’s like taking West Orange and wiping it off the map,” he told NJ Jewish News.

In mid-September, Spector received an e-mail from the New Jersey Psychological Association requesting volunteers to help out. “I just felt I had the skills that people needed pretty badly. So I came down here.”

And although time away from his Livingston psychology practice — where he deals with children with Asperger’s Syndrome and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as well as teens and adults dealing with social skills problems — can be disruptive, he said, he has received overwhelming support from his patients. “Three even called me here to check on me,” Spector said.

He described a chaotic situation in Mississippi, where the Baptist churches are doing most of the work. “The churches have taken in hundreds of people, and parishioners have been cooking for them for weeks. I have found the most incredible, wonderful, caring, loving people.” And, he added, there are volunteers from all over the country.

Spector, working out of a church in Jackson, Miss., has settled into a daily route covering 200 miles. He has insisted on seeing the same patients each day. “They need a face they can depend on.” He works 12-14 hours a day, and the people who have his Red Cross cell number use it whenever they need him, calling any time of the day or night, he said.

In such a brief time frame, Spector said, he could not offer intensive therapy. Instead, he said, he’s helping evacuees organize themselves and make decisions. “I try to remind them not to look back but to look forward. I ask them, ‘What can I do to help you?’ I tell them they have to make decisions.” Some he can help; others have what Spector calls “the 9/11 stare,” a term referring to the behavior he observed treating those who fled the World Trade Center in 2001. “One woman would just sit, staring at the wall for hours. The emotional scars will be there long after the physical ones are healed,” he predicted.

And then there are the volunteers who are themselves beginning to feel the strain of their work. “They’re flipping out and they need help too — like the check writers who have to turn people down. They hate it. They cry.”

Spector said he’s seen “the good, the bad, and the ugly” on his tour of duty in Mississippi. “I’ve seen the good in people, what they’ve done for people in need. The bad: One woman was angry because there was a tree in her pool and she wanted the Red Cross to pay [her request was refused]; and the ugly, in the lack of coordination” among the organizations trying to offer relief.

What he hasn’t seen a lot of are Jews. “The Jewish presence just isn’t here. I’m here, and I make sure everyone knows I’m Jewish.” He also gave out stuffed hearts prepared by members of National Council of Jewish Women for people he felt needed a little boost. “And I let them know they’re from NCJW.”

He enlisted the help of his South Orange synagogue, Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel, for a couple from Vietnam. They put a son through college and had finally saved enough money to visit the wife’s 80-year-old mother in Vietnam, according to Spector. Now they would have to use that money to rebuild — like so many others, they lost everything in the hurricane. They will not be able to make the trip and seemed “very depressed,” said Spector. Twenty minutes after he called Sharey Tefilo-Israel’s rabbi, Dan Cohen, a member came forward with enough mileage for two free tickets for the couple. “You can’t imagine the joy on her face when I told her. She cried; I cried,” said Spector.

To those whom Spector grew to trust, he offered his private cell phone number so they could reach him once he returned to New Jersey should they need his help.

And he said he hopes to initiate collaborative projects between the Baptist churches and his own synagogue. “We have to somehow get together and work together and become one nation and heal each other.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.

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