<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Magic, sports offer relief in stormy times BATON ROUGE, La. -- "Grant Hill, will you help me find my daughter! Please, I need to find my baby! I need to find my grandbabies!" Hill puts an arm around Sheila Robertson on Wednesday at an evacuee shelter in a Baton Rouge Baptist church. Robertson hasn't seen her daughter Lakisha or her granddaughters since Hurricane Katrina hit two weeks ago. She clings to hope like she once clung to the chimney on the roof of her house as the water rose up and the tears flowed down. Hill gives her a squeeze and whispers in her ear. "They're going to find your daughter," he says. "She's going to be all right." Grant Hill found out Wednesday that when you're dealing with broken hearts, cracked ankles don't seem quite so critical. He discovered that an athlete's stress fractures seem small when compared to a hurricane victim's stress factors. "Life-changing," Hill said of the Orlando Magic's mercy mission to Louisiana. "This puts my injuries in perspective." No, this column is not meant to minimize sports in the aftermath of the greatest natural disaster in American history. In fact, this is a story about how sports have taken a lead role in uplifting the downtrodden. The Magic were supposed to fly the team plane to Michigan on Wednesday for a company retreat, but instead they loaded the plane with 6,000 pounds of emergency supplies and flew them to Louisiana. And they're going to do it again today -- fill the plane with soap, diapers, baby wipes, kid's books and, yes, basketballs and hoops. That's three tons worth of supplies and probably another 10 tons worth of morale.</div> <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"It just makes you feel a little better knowing that an NBA team from Florida cares enough to come here and help out," says Jennifer Freeman, rescued from the roof of her home while clutching her 4-month-old. Freeman tells horrific stories of the hungered children shivering up on the roof and the hungry alligators swimming down the street. She is one of the 600 at this overloaded shelter. She used to have her own house and now just hopes for her own spot on the floor. She's been crying for days, but for a couple hours Wednesday, she was laughing like crazy as Grant Hill played basketball in front of the shelter with a bunch of kids. "We needed this," Jennifer says. "Grant Hill -- he's an angel from heaven."</div> Full Story This is truly great what they are doing there.
