There are red states vs. blue states, Catholics vs. Protestants, Northerners vs. Southerners, Democrats vs. Republicans, pro-this and anti-that as people are sliced, diced, wedged and subdivided.

In this past year, these divisions meant nothing to people like Carl "Duke" Kemp, a Texas-born engineer who retired to Mandeville, La., a town on the north edge of Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans.

He's a white man who picked up construction tools for black homeowners; a Presbyterian who has worked with the evangelicals, the Catholics and whomever. He's a tough man who nearly breaks into tears, hushing himself rather than going to mush after declaring, "We're not heroes."

In the kitchen at Ann and Don Crittenden's home outside Bloomington, Don Crittenden must differ. Heroes, he said, take bold action when they aren't required to do so. That fits Duke and the gang down in Mandeville and its neighbor, LaCombe.

For all the bitterness and angst that has stuck into the collective memory of Katrina - memories of government ineptitude and desperate evacuees and of corpses left on sidewalks and floating down a New Orleans street; of Mississippi coastal towns swept clean by stormwaters - the Katrina and Rita aftermath has another side.

It's the story of love and caring, of getting choked up at the idea of returning hope and a home to a guy like Rodell Davis. Pushing 80, eyesight failing, diabetic, mobile with the help of a cane, Davis is a retired trucker who had built his own home decades ago in LaCombe.

After the storms, he paid for supplies with the money he had. The church people restored his house. The Catholics and the Protestants and the blacks and whites and the Republicans and the Democrats, the Southerners and the Yanks. Ann Crittenden said she sobbed while saying goodbye to him.

New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Mandeville has fully repaired seven flood-damaged homes and a Baptist church in LaCombe with the help of various church groups. Crittenden organized four trips with 55 volunteers as director of discipleship, adult Christian education, mission and outreach for Bloomington's Second Presbyterian.

"Always look out of that bad for something good to come," said Jane Kemp, who is married to Duke and who worked on post-hurricane relief with him. "We were supposed to help each other. That's how we're created."

She and Duke devoted their year to helping neighbors rebuild, as did Ed and Reta Bergquist, also retired in Mandeville.

Ed is 77 years old. He says he tires easily, and no one at the Crittenden's kitchen table takes his modesty seriously. His idea of tiring is that, because he is doing manual labor, he usually only runs three miles a day instead of six.

To both couples, it doesn't surprise them that they rose to the occasion.

Said Jane Kemp, "The question is, What made you, living in Bloomington, Illinois, come down to do what you did? In each town, what pushed all these multitudes of people to do this?"

There are hundreds of similar stories, played out through many churches across Central Illinois and the nation. Adults from all employment sectors donated a week of vacation to the effort. Youths and parents gave up Christmas breaks, spring breaks and parts of their summers.

Despair and hardship remain plentiful in the coastal cities, but so too is a sense of camaraderie.

Jane Kemp said, "We've been blessed with seeing the people from all over the country. We are the most blessed people in the world."

Cross-denominational examples have been abundant.

Denominational differences are important, Crittenden said. Specific beliefs matter to him. But in situations like this, he said, it's easy to put the differences away for a common goal. His groups included Methodists, nondenominational Christians, Catholics, Lutherans and Presbyterians.

Without exception, he said, the volunteers have thanked him for the trips - for the opportunity to sleep on air mattresses in the New Covenant day-care center and to undertake manual labor, without charge, much of it in hot, muggy bayou weather.

Holly Houska, a Bloomington dentist, has little optimism that this nation will somehow quickly gather cohesion. But she was glad to get a glimpse - and to share it with her three sons, ages 10, 13 and 16, and Mark, her husband and partner in dental practice. People from at least four denominations were camped at New Covenant while she was there working for Davis, who often spoke of the blessings they brought.

She didn't catch what church he attends, if any.

All seven homeowners in the New Covenant projects are black, but the projects had no cross-cultural objective. It just worked out that way, said the New Covenant members.

This was partly because the predominantly white Mandeville, being at a higher elevation, recovered more quickly from storm damage and averted flooding. LaCombe homes were flooded by Katrina and again by Rita. By January, the Bergquists and Kemps were looking outside their community to assist in recovery. LaCombe, which has a mixed population, was a logical choice, as the communities share schools and friendships, and the out-of-the-way LaCombe wasn't getting much attention.

Said Duke, "LaCombe never even made the local headlines."

Those who had money paid for supplies. All but one of the owners were physically unable to repair their homes. The exception was Bobby Batiste, a retired electrician. He was a constant presence in the recovery work, and the Mandeville church groups fixed his house.

By November's onset, the New Covenant projects were being completed, and the Kemps and Bergquists took a vacation together to reconnect with friends in McLean County and Indianapolis.

They were tired and anxious to return to some sense of normal lives. But they also were seeing so much work to be done.

In Louisiana alone, Katrina and Rita damaged 515,249 homes, with 204,737 of those homes being uninhabitable without repair, according to a study commissioned by Capital One bank.

Duke Kemp said, "You sure can't fix them all. But you sure can work every day. That's been, really, our motto."

Ed Bergquist added, "And at the end of the day, there's a little more done than there was in the morning."

What can one church do?

New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Mandeville, La., has had some role in 80 hurricane recovery projects.

The church reports that in the year since hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the church:

• Housed 1,442 workers from around the world.

• Provided 10,854 meals.

• Collected more than $118,994 in funds for relief work from individuals and organizations in the United States and Canada.

• Repaired seven homes and a church in neighboring LaCombe.