After an estimated two-dozen tornadoes hit Illinois on Nov. 17, some Harding students used part of their Thanksgiving break to help residents in the town of Washington.
Senior Kyle Reeves, junior Jasmine Pierce and Mark Elrod, professor of political science, all helped people clean up and worked at a distribution center.
“We weren’t able to do any cleanup on Monday or Tuesday because the city had it closed down so that they could do whatever they needed to get done,” Pierce said. “So those first two days we worked at a distribution center in downtown Washington (Ill.) … The Distribution Center is different than the other ones around because everything is brand new.”
Pierce said they gave out items such as cases of water, food boxes, personal care boxes, baby formula and diapers, clothes, pillows, blankets and cleaning supply buckets. She said, however, that being at the distribution center was more than just giving things to people and that they didn’t just “hand out items.”
“We would talk to those who came in needing help and just listen to their stories,” Pierce said. “You could just hear the despair in most people’s voices, and a few would break down because they couldn’t hold back the tears. It was completely heartbreaking.”
After those days of volunteering at the center, they moved on to working on cleanup and whatever residents needed help with. Reeves said that the city of Washington was not allowed to help pick up wreckage on other people’s property so the homeowners were responsible for all clean up.
They did not have a particular plan of action, but said they just went around the city looking for people to help.
“(We) went out last week and just helped people clean up at random, and by that I mean we drove around until we found some people that looked like they needed help and we asked to help them out,” Reeves said. “Essentially what we did while cleaning up was sorted through what was left of the house and grabbed what was salvageable and then took everything else out and placed it in piles by the road for the city to pick up and take away.”
Reeves said Elrod also brought up gallons of water and a few other cleaning supplies paid for by Harding.
Pierce said that during the cleanup of one of the destroyed houses, something particular caught her eye.
“There was a blackboard on the wall of the kitchen that was left standing and it had ‘God bless you’ written in chalk,” Pierce said. “I never found out if that was there before the tornado, or written afterwards as a way of thank you to the volunteers. Either way, it was really encouraging to see, even from an outside perspective.”
Senior Tyler Gentry, Student Association president, said that himself, Elrod, and Andrew Baker, director of the Mitchell Center, are currently working to put together a relief trip for after final exams, but no plans have been officially set yet.
