The message on Brian Eagen’s cell phone Wednesday night was one he had been waiting almost a month for – he was finally going to Louisiana to aid in the hurricane relief effort.

“Hi Brian, this is Marge. I am a volunteer at the Red Cross, and we want you to get sent down to help with the disaster relief, so give me a call sometime,” the message said.

The message meant Eagen, freshman in pre-architecture, would have to tell his professors he was going to be gone for two weeks, pack some clothes and antibiotics, and leave the comfort of his Friley Hall room to go stay in a Red Cross shelter – but he said it is worth it for the help he could offer.

On Sept. 3, the Saturday after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Eagen was discussing Katrina during dinner with his family in Rochester, Minn.

“We were kind of arguing about whose fault it was and stuff like that,” he said.

“My mom told a story she heard on the news about someone from Ohio driving down there with his pickup truck and his kayak and he was down there picking people up. And that kind of made me start thinking, ‘OK, if this one guy can go down there, why aren’t there more people going down there?'”

Eagen decided to take classes in shelter operations and mass care, which were being offered by the Red Cross, and afterward, he told the director of the Red Cross he wanted to volunteer to be deployed to the Gulf Coast. After he filled out the necessary paperwork, he told some people on his dorm floor of his plans, and the response was one of disbelief and astonishment.

“Dude, you are crazy,” Eagen said he remembers one of his floormates saying.

One person close to him, though, thought it was a good decision. On Saturday afternoon, he sat in his room with his girlfriend, Sarah Bigus, who goes to Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and she expressed confidence in his decision.

“I certainly didn’t want him to just leave and just go,” Bigus said. “Now that he is going through the Red Cross, that’s better. He is really passionate about it, and I think that’s really cool and we’re really proud of him.”

Doug Yetman, executive director of the Lincoln Way Chapter of the American Red Cross, said Eagen could be deployed to any of the 30 Red Cross staff shelters on the Gulf Coast.

He said Eagen would probably share space with between 30 and 80 people and will sleep on a cot or in a sleeping bag. Despite being told about these living conditions when he signed up, Eagen still decided it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

He said he has studied ahead for some of his classes, and his professors have been understanding about his decision to leave. He said he heard a lot in the news about people trying to find someone to blame for the disaster, and he didn’t want to be one of those people, choosing to do something rather than pointing fingers.

“What really kind of pissed me off about the whole situation was that you heard more in the media about people trying to put the blame on other people than actually what was being done and what help was trying to be provided,” Eagen said.

When Delta Airlines Flight 4418 to Baton Rouge, La., takes off from the Des Moines airport Tuesday, Eagen will have made a thought he had during dinner with his family into a reality.