Ex-Clark school board member starts United Way job under pressure

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005 | 9:54 a.m.

Former Clark County School Board member Denise Brodsky, who resigned last month to become executive director of the United Way's St. Charles Parish office near New Orleans, is safe in Baton Rouge, her husband said.

Denise Brodsky was visiting friends in northwestern Florida when New Orleans residents were ordered to evacuate Aug. 27, said her husband, Mitch Brodsky. She managed to catch a flight to Dallas, where her daughter is a senior at Southern Methodist University, but was barred from returning to the New Orleans area where she had hoped to offer assistance.

Mitch Brodsky, an engineer who has remained in Las Vegas so that the couple's youngest daughter may finish her senior year of high school at Las Vegas Academy, managed to find his wife a rental car which she drove to Baton Rouge, La. this weekend.

Brodsky, whose first day on the job was supposed to be Thursday, is hoping to return to St. Charles Parish just west of the city of New Orleans by today.

"They couldn't have offered the position to anyone more suited to handle the emergency she's a part of now," Brodsky said.

St. Charles Parish includes some areas on the east side of the Mississippi River although the bulk of the territory is rural communities on the western banks.

Mitch Brodsky said he spent a week in mid-August helping his wife move into a rented apartment on Moss Street in New Orleans.

That apartment building, located less than three miles from the Louisiana Superdome that served as the shelter of last resort for 25,000 hurricane refugees, has been destroyed, Brodsky said.

"Everything's gone," said Brodsky, an engineer. "We filled it with her stuff, furniture, even her car is gone."

But those are incidental compared with the enormous suffering of area residents and it's those individuals who have his wife's undivided attention, Brodsky said.

Brodsky said his wife is struggling to handle the flurry of calls from public and private entities eager to donate to the relief effort. The lack of a working phone system, and the fact that St. Charles Parish has no office to speak of, are complicating matters, Mitch Brodsky said.

To help expedite matters, Brodsky said, he plans to set up a bank account for donations to the United Way's St. Charles Parish.

Brodsky said he doesn't regret his wife's decision to take the job.

"This has been a dream of my wife's to do this for a long time, to be given this kind of responsibility," Brodsky said. "We supported her decision as a family, and now we're going going to help her move forward."