Wednesday, October 24, 2001
|
Wednesday, October 24, 2001 |
|
Fayette group helps bolster exhausted New York volunteers By DAVE
HAMRICK
There's more than one way to help in a crisis. Fourteen members of two Fayette County churches are doing their part for relief efforts in New York City, not by helping sift through rubble or mount search-and-rescue efforts, but by supporting those who do. Members of Peachtree City and Providence United Methodist churches left Sunday, some driving all night in a van and some traveling by airplane, heading for a converted recreation center on Staten Island, where they are now providing such mundane services as doing the laundry, cooking and serving meals for workers staying there. Led by the Rev. Sam Silverman of Peachtree City UMC, volunteers on the trip are Joe Runnals, Barney Spurr, Kevin McCormick, Tara Workmaster, Darlene Pope, Karen Wenrick and Becky Williams of Peachtree City; and Kevin Zaj, Jana Strickland, Marsha Wells, Mary Inlow, Bill Coppedge and Dan Lighthouse of Providence. The local group is working with Home Port Relief and Rescue Center, a facility designed for a much happier mission called Fleet Week. That's the time when eight to ten military ships stop in at the Staten Island Pier and volunteers provide spirit-lifting recreation and relaxation for around 5,500 soldiers and sailors, said Ronnie Micciulla, director of the operation. "It's a high-spirited kind of thing," she said. But Home Port has now been transformed into housing and support services for 187 National Guardsmen and other workers who are tasked with sifting through a growing mountain of debris from the World Train Center towers. The debris is being deposited by truck and barge at an old land fill, and the workers are looking for anything that might help identify victims of the disaster. A regular cadre of New York volunteers has dragged donated mattresses into racket ball courts and a gymnasium, converting them into a dormitory, and has been feeding, clothing and providing a variety of services for the workers for six weeks now, said Micciulla. She doesn't have to say that the work has become exhausting ... you can hear it in her voice. "We are really shot," she said. "They are incredible," she said of volunteers like the ones from here. "They're taking the burden off of our people for awhile." Fayette volunteers, who are scheduled to return Saturday, are simply helping with the tasks that the New York volunteers have been doing ... stripping and making every bed every day, cooking and serving 1,000 meals a day, laundry, warehouse security, counseling, massage therapy, warehouse security ... "You name it." Volunteers even get involved with providing changes of clothes during the day because of New York's rapidly changing weather. "It was freezing yesterday, and tomorrow it's supposed to get up to 80," said Micciulla. Most of the New York volunteers took the first two weeks off from work, but now are back at their jobs, going from work to Home Port, home to sleep and back to work. The work is emotionally exhausting as much as it is physically hard, she added. "They help us out tremendously," Micciulla said of the visitors. "And they bring that little bit of Southern hospitality to us." If other groups want to help out, Micciulla said, they'll be welcome. The Home Port phone number is 718-448-4076. "What we need most of all is your prayers," she said. "It's going to be a long, cold winter."
|
||