"If you ever met my wife, you'd know it would be hard to imagine her staying in a place like that. But she did it, and she did it happily," he says.
It got Waldron, who is 40, thinking that as bad as the markets are now, he's still more fortunate than most. With the economy down, he and his friends have had to go back to basics to drum up business: looking for referrals, poring through their lists of existing clients and looking for ways to do more for them. But the fact is, despite the market's collapse, most people are still doing all right, he says.
"I felt like it was important to spend some time not just with wealthy people who may have lost money in their portfolio and needed to see a spreadsheet and have their hand held. I wanted to spend time with people who had virtually nothing, to help out families who really needed help," he says.
Waldron wound up in Waveland, Miss., this past March with a group affiliated with his wife's church, Christian Life Center. They helped build a house for the Brown family, who lost everything in the hurricane. Waldron says he was initially skeptical about the family's level of need and wondered why the husband was just standing around and letting volunteers build him a house. He soon learned that the patriarch of the family had pancreatic cancer and a history of mental illness. And yet he was actually embarrassed that he had to rely on other people.
Waldron then heard what happened to the Brown family during the storm. When the hurricane hit, the house began to flood and everyone moved from downstairs to the second floor, never dreaming the water would continue to rise. In fact, the water in Waveland, which is close to the Gulf of Mexico, rose 26 feet before retreating. Most of the town's houses were underwater. Stuck on the second floor of their home, the Brown family moved up into the attic, and as the storm waters continued to rise, they began to climb out onto the roof. But with gusting winds and torrential rains, Mrs. Brown was unable to hold onto the roof and she let go and began to float away in the water.
"The winds are blowing 80 miles an hour and she said she looked up at her family, and she knew they were going to be OK, and that she was completely satisfied. And then she let go, "giving up against the wind, Waldron says. But then, "Two of her sons jumped into the water and held her onto the roof until another family came by with a rowboat."
Waldron says he was so moved by his experience in Waveland that he doesn't know what he will do next. He just knows it will include volunteering in some form every year.
"I honestly felt like I got more out of it than I put in," Waldron says. "It grounds you by getting you back to what is important."