A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to head over to Rockcastle County for a few days to aid in the disaster relief efforts that have been going on since flooding moved through the region earlier this month. CAP's Disaster Relief program, led by Sherry Buresh, was created at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Now, whenever there's a need for a response, emails are sent out and CAP and community volunteers spring into action.
I went over on Wednesday night and met up with several friends who'd been there since Sunday evening. We slept in a church that had graciously opened its doors to us for the week. As you can probably imagine, things are very touch-and-go at the home base of a relief effort. Any time I saw Sherry, she was pacing back and forth, puffing away on a cigarette and trying to figure out where, exactly, the individuals needing help were located. If you'd watched the news at all in May, you know that there's an obvious need for assistance here. The problem is that many of those who need the help - for reasons of pride or misinformation - haven't alerted the necessary authorities, so it follows to reason that organizers of relief efforts can't track them all down. Therefore, I never knew what I'd be doing until the morning of each work day. And, frankly, that was perfectly fine with me.
Thursday morning, I was told that I'd be working with Mark - an awesome volunteer from the Sandy Valley region - and five members of the O'Shea volunteer group. Now, working with an organization that has the word "Christian" in its title means that incoming short-term volunteers often come to us from church groups and Catholic high schools. The O'Shea crowd, on the contrary, was a phenomenal group of folks from the O'Shea pubs in Louisville. Tom O'Shea, the owner, was with me on Thursday; he owns the four restaurants and is honestly one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He's got five kids whom he's put through Catholic high school. One night during the week they traveled from Mount Vernon to Louisville to watch his son play baseball. In short, talking to him felt like talking to any of the dads I knew from the rink or the ball fields on Long Island. We went to a house in Richmond that day to clear out a basement. Luckily, there wasn't all that much in said basement, so we only had to move some boxes and a few pieces of furniture before hacking away at the walls. Afterwards, we covered everything in a bleach solution and called it a day before noon. "The O'Sheas," as we came to call them, had to hit the road early that day, so Tom asked Mark and I to accompany the rest of them to Berea from some coffee and good conversation. We gladly obliged their request, and spent some time at Berea Coffee & Tea enjoying their laid-back company, slinging one-liners and laughing loudly. It felt like we were at an Irish pub. Or a McCormack family gathering. Both good things.
The following day, I went with a different group of CAP volunteers to Casey County, where we'd been told there was a trailer that needed to be vacated of its furniture. We met its resident, Rodney, outside. He was a big man with a face that housed a permanent smile over a neatly trimmed white beard and tiny eyes that had deep laugh lines etched into their corners. He'd only lives in his trailer, which he rented, for a year; that's when he'd lost his job in Cincinnati and moved down to Kentucky with his wife who, at only sixty years of age, has been battling Alzheimer's for over a year now. All of his furniture had been destroyed or contaminated by mold after the "Five Hundred Year Flood," and we had to clear all of it, jumping over holes in the rotting floor as we moved over the water-logged carpet. The outlook was pretty bleak for our friend. But he hung in there with us all day, helping as much as he could and never complaining once. He looked at the experience as a test of sorts, and had complete faith that everything would work out in his favor, despite the fact that his landlords appeared to be entirely insensitive to his situation and seemed to be taking advantage of him and his wife. Reader, I fell in love with Rodney; his sense of humor and fiercely optimistic attitude were inspiring. The privilege of going through a lot of his personal items with him - hearing his stories and being his audience - was an absolute gift. When the day came to a close and he had to go pick up his wife at her adult day care center, he gave me a bear hug that threatened to wring the tears from my eyes.
Just down the way from Rodney's trailer was a trailer belonging to another man named Bert. Bert was sixty-eight years old, had been completely slammed by the disaster, and was working diligently the entire time we were at Rodney's with nothing but a pair of torn latex gloves and an old surgical mask. It was evident that he had put a lot of work into his home; decorative paneling lined the walls and wood floors ran throughout. As we pulled off the sheet rock, though, we could see that the water had already done its worst. Mold had infested absolutely everything, and we believed that it would only be a matter of time before the trailer was condemned. Bert must have had an inkling of this, too. When I spoke with him, though, he only had wonderful things to say. He said that this daughter hadn't spoken to him for several years but, upon hearing about the floods, she'd driven to him immediately and spent three days working in his home with him.
"Everything happens for a reason," he said to me, slowly and emphatically. "I'd gladly take all of this in return for my daughter speaking to me again. I'm a blessed man." He smiled a beautiful, genuine smile and said, "And you folks are the answers to my prayers."
He looked around the gutted remnants of his home and said, almost to himself, "Everything I wanted to get done today is done 'cause of all of you. Ain't no way I coulda done this without you all. You came in here like a hurricane." The thought seemed to strike him, and he stopped surveying the wreckage and let his hopeful eyes find mine. "Hurricane! Can I call you guys the Hurricane Gang? Is that alright?"
I couldn't think of anything that was more alright at that moment.
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