Everyday Ut Prosim: How Hokies serve after Hurricane Helene
The Everyday Ut Prosim series celebrates how Hokies live out the spirit of service on campus and off — a spirit that ignited after Hurricane Helene hit the area on Sept. 27. Since then, students, staff, and faculty have mobilized to provide service to affected communities in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Here are a few of their stories.
"I'm not going to go empty handed"
When a musician friend invited Scott Patrick, a senior mechanical designer in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, to play bluegrass guitar at a hurricane benefit concert in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, he had one thought: “I’m not going to go empty handed.” In his life as a working musician, Patrick had made friends in many of the worst-affected communities and had often driven the now-broken back roads of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. “It breaks my heart to see these communities just gone,” he said.
With the support of his church, GraceLife Baptist in Christiansburg, Patrick launched a donation drive. Immediately, supplies of all kinds began pouring in, dropped off in the church’s foyer by community members who arrived every few minutes with bags and boxes. Radford Fire Department, Christiansburg Rescue Squad, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, and many other local organizations and businesses donated safety equipment and medical supplies.
“I’m pretty amazed that this much could be gathered up in a few days, in an area that’s relatively disconnected from the kind of turmoil and destruction down there,” Patrick said. “This is just a drop in the bucket to help, but at least I’m doing something.”
On Oct. 4, several GraceLife church members and community volunteers, including Karin Clark, associate director for business development in the Office of Innovation and Partnerships at Virginia Tech, sorted donations into plastic tubs. Formula and baby food here, gloves and masks there, medicines over here, don’t forget the bottled water. By 10 a.m. they’d filled a large trailer top to bottom for Patrick to drive to Statesville, North Carolina, where volunteer pilots with Hurricane Helene Airlift Relief would fly it to struggling communities.
After 15 years working at Virginia Tech, Patrick recognized this abundant generosity as the definition of Ut Prosim (That I May Serve). “These donations are coming from everywhere,” he said. “Everybody wants to help.”
"People are good and want to help"
The first post-hurricane team meeting for Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia “turned into people making phone calls and checking on people,” said project coordinator Lauren Trice. For the grant-funded project co-directed by Emily Satterwhite, the Edward S. Diggs Professor of Humanities in the Department of Religion and Culture, and Katrina Powell, professor of English and director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies, staffers had spent months working with local organizers. When disaster struck, “we had the network in place already.”
Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia staff coordinated with local mutual aid society Holler 2 Holler to transport supplies to Tazewell, Galax, Pulaski and Marion in Virginia and Unicoi County, Tennessee, where personal connections ensured that the right supplies got to people who needed them.
Independence, in Grayson County, was the destination for Trice and her mother, Evalin. Their roots run deep there: Trice’s grandmother grew up in Independence. First they stopped at Blacksburg Feed and Seed to buy the pet food and livestock feed requested by Grayson County Emergency Management. Told where the supplies were going, store president Martin Hanbury waved off any payment.
At the next stop, a Holler 2 Holler warehouse on North Main, Erin McKelvy ’04 urged the Trices to take whatever donations they thought could be useful, from cleaning supplies to adult diapers. Within a few days of the storm, McKelvy had made the connections for the landlord to donate the space for this purpose. “People are good,” she said, “and want to help.”
Though the roads to Independence were damaged by the storm, Lauren and Evalin Trice made it through and passed off supplies to grateful representatives of Grayson County Emergency Management. A few extras were delivered to a food bank in Galax and to the Calfee Community and Cultural Center in Pulaski.
The minivan finally empty, the Trices headed home.
"It’s touching to see Ut Prosim in action"
An hour into the thank you bag–making event organized by Hokies for Hurricane Relief, the project was a well-oiled machine.
Student volunteers in a Pamplin classroom wrote notes to first responders — “Thank you! You have changed lives!” — stuffed bags with miniature Kit Kats and Hershey bars, tied the kits with ribbon, and stowed them in boxes, destined for the firefighters, EMTs, and police officers of western North Carolina.
Emergency personnel are “some of the unsung heroes, and they may not get the recognition that they deserve,” said Andrew Peterson, a junior majoring in environmental conservation and society and the president of the Chocolate Milk Monday Club, a student organization that pitched in with the event. “We figured this is a really good way to make sure that they realize that they are seen, and we appreciate everything that they do for our community, for our friends, for our families."
Organized shortly after the hurricane by sophomore multimedia journalism major Alex Frank, an Asheville native, and Durant Parker-Ashe, a sophomore meteorology major from Virginia Beach, Hokies for Hurricane Relief has raised almost $3,500 through GoFundMe. For senior Brooke Kleber, who discovered the Hokies for Hurricane Relief Instagram account on her way from cleaning up her Helene-walloped Asheville neighborhood, the organization was a boon, offering additional hands-on ways to help her hometown. “To see all the people out here who want to help is amazing,” she said. “It’s touching to see Ut Prosim in action.”
The original goal of the event was to make 500 care packages. But after one hour, the students had blown through that number and were headed toward 600 and beyond. None of the dozen or so volunteers showed any signs of quitting.
Efforts to help with hurricane relief are ongoing. Find a way to get involved by visiting VT Engage.
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