AEDC volunteers pitch in to help tornado victims

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  When tornadoes recently ravaged the mid-South, including rural and urban areas of Alabama, members of AEDC's work force stepped up to help and "pay it forward."

Tawana Gardner, an ATA project manager at the Space and Missiles Branch, is from Birmingham, Ala.

"The church that I used to go to is on Facebook and so I could see where they needed help and some of the supplies and items that they needed," she said. "I knew I wanted to go down anyway, but that made it easier for me because I knew where to go. I was stationed in a tent handing out essential items to the victims of the tornadoes."

For Gardner, the storm's impact was personal.

"My mom lives on one side of the interstate and it actually touched down on the other side," she said. "So, I didn't realize how close it was until I got there."

For Der'Ivan Kelly, an ATA instrumentation and controls engineer at VKF, the tornado and its aftermath was something he also took personally.

"I grew up in Birmingham and went to college in Nashville and it hasn't been home for quite awhile, but home is where the heart is," he said. "The neighborhoods that were impacted were the neighborhoods that I grew up in, [the streets] that I walked on, rode my bikes on.

"And I knew that one of my best friends' parents got displaced from the storm damage and some friends who were in the neighborhood, their houses were totally gone. I just wanted to go home and help as best I could."

Kelly solicited donations from others on base, took them, directly, to an elementary school and helped to distribute everyday essentials like food and clothing to storm victims.

The church attended by Kelly's mother was destroyed by the storm.

2nd Lt. Brad Chronister, a project manager in AEDC's Investments Branch, didn't hesitate when a co-worker, Artious Walker, an engineering co-op student, asked for help in distributing needed supplies to storm victims in another part of Alabama.

"He had rented a truck and begun collecting donations from his office and would need some help taking food, gas, water and clothes down to Huntsville," the lieutenant said. "Artious told me he had been down to Huntsville already and said our time might be better spent driving to Tuscaloosa instead.

"We had some cash donations, some clothes and a lot of water. I took about $100 to Goodwill to buy some more clothes with Lt. Drew Miller, whom I told about the plan the day before."

The trip to Goodwill, which ended up requiring two trucks and four volunteers, paid off in more ways than they had anticipated.

"Once people in the store heard what we were doing, shoppers and workers started giving us money out of their pocket to help out," Lieutenant Chronister said. "The store gave us half off everything as well as several containers of new donations that hadn't been tagged. Out of their generosity we ended up turning that $100 into about $1,500 to $2,000 worth of clothes and ended up having to take my truck as well because of space constraints."

After dropping off the donations at a Tuscaloosa church serving as a distribution center, the two lieutenants and the co-op students went out to try and help.

"The devastation was more than I expected," Lieutenant Chronister said. "There were concrete slabs left where houses used to be, 100-year-old trees broken off at the trunk and cars tossed all over the place. There was a 6 p.m. curfew enforced by the National Guard in effect to prevent any possible looting. This didn't go as well for Lieutenant Miller and me since we had to drive back that night we only got to help one household unload some belongings into a storage unit."

Lieutenant Chronister credits Walker for initiating the effort to help others in need.

"Artious and another co-op [student] named Drew Owens stayed overnight and apparently got to get their hands dirty the next day," he said. "It was really amazing how much people truly want to help as soon as one person gets the ball rolling. I probably wouldn't have been involved if not for Artious coming to me, which in turn brought Drew Miller on board and got all the people over at Goodwill involved as well.

"As a military member I have seen plenty of examples of leadership in action, but to see its effects in a completely organic environment really showed me how much influence one motivated person can have on a situation."

Seeing the destruction first hand left a powerful impression on the volunteers.

"This experience taught me how to truly be grateful for what God has given us," said Walker, who is a graduate student at Alabama A&M University. "I'm not simply talking about our cars or our homes. I'm talking about our lives because that same disaster area could have easily been located a little further towards the northeast.

"It also taught me that real heroes don't walk around with masks or capes. A hero is simply someone who is presented with the opportunity to do the right thing and takes advantage of it - not for publicity, or money but because it is the right thing to do."

Walker pointed out that people from the PrayerNet, investments and other departments gave significant donations of gas, food, clothes and money.

Gardner sent out an e-mail on AEDC's PrayerNet.

"I am sending out this mail note because we take so many things for granted," she wrote. "It was heart breaking when someone would come up and specifically ask for items like soap, toothpaste or underwear. Be thankful for even the little things..."

Kelly plans to return to Birmingham when he can to continue the effort to return life to normal, a long process, but all part of paying it forward.