In what was left of a park built to honor World War II veterans in what was left of a small town in Mississippi, the CEO of Home Depot and 500 volunteers came one recent Saturday morning to build a playground.

"We had a lot of gnats working, too," laughs Leo "Chipper" McDermott, alderman-at-large for the town of Pass Christian, once home to 6,000, now barely 2,000.

More than eight months after Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast, Pass Christian is one of the many towns that remains devastated.