The volunteer experience I had in Moore, Oklahoma last
week was overwhelmingly a positive and beneficial experience. Any person who is willing and able to
volunteer, should have this experience.
In that yard, a college student and I spend several
minutes unwrapping a large wrought iron picture frame from around a tree. Shortly thereafter, she found a picture of a
man holding a baby. Treasure recovered.
The picture was carefully placed in a Ziploc bag and delivered to the local Library. Later on at that house, kneeling on the
ground, I scooped into trash bags debris that included mostly leaves, with a
random red Lego and a spool of purple thread mixed in. The bright colors in contrast to the brown
leaves look so out of place, I combed the trash for irreplaceable treasure. I found none.
It is exhilarating to do yard work with a group of
strangers. A big part of my team consisted
of college students in the ROTC program at Cameron University. They were strong, eager and energetic. Tearing down a fence and trees went by very
quickly! Every time a branch or portion
of the fence was pulled off, there was someone there to pass it to. Every time a pile of leaves was created by my
rake, a person with a shovel and wheelbarrow seemed to magically appear to pick
it up. I wish I had these people around
when I was landscaping in MY backyard!
A man dying of cancer came out into the back yard to
personally thank and shake the hand of every volunteer who helped clean up his
once carefully manicured yard.
One lady told me that she had been hit by the May 3rd,
1999 tornado, so she moved a few miles away and the tornado followed her.
You get the sense that the people of Moore Oklahoma have
done this before. Everyone pitches in.
The pre-teen girls who served the volunteers lunch were kind enough to
remember names and offered people seconds.
This experience restored my faith in humanity. One of the most spectacular things was that
people came from other states. On my
team alone, there were people from 5 states.
I rode in the car with a couple from Ohio, and man from Seattle. I worked alongside nurses from Fort Worth, Texas and
Lawton, Oklahoma. Two men left their families and business in Illinois, packed their chain saws and showed up to help. I met a college
student from Southern California who dropped his summer classes to volunteer in
Oklahoma for the summer instead. I met a
mother and her two grown children from Kansas City.
The devastation was shocking. It was like a war zone. The pictures on the news didn't do it justice. The thing that got to me the most was the
children’s things within the rubble. A
red wagon piled on a trashed couch, with drywall and tree limbs stacked on top
of it.
The end of my day was spent in a neighborhood across from
the apartments my husband lived in 5 years earlier The
houses were demolished. The volunteers were clearing a path for the equipment
that was going to be used to knock down the houses. That was tough. In front of one house, I saw a random
serving spoon, a tube of Orajel and a toothbrush.
