Thank you to so many people who are heroes in the Helene hurricane shock.
Our neighbor Brooke Sechrist Dunham works for Performance Foodservice; her company gave her food to put out in her front yard for our neighborhood daily. Cheerios, protein bars, paper towels and much more. We are very grateful to Brooke and Performance Foodservice. Thanks to all our neighbors who found water and shared it that first week.
Crisis Response International set up in the B.B. Barns yard with food and water. Amazing angels!
We had two wellness checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I will always be grateful for their presence and all the planes and helicopters overhead. Thank you, National Guard, police, fire, EMS rescue, Duke Energy, Spectrum, Dominion Energy, the water department, tree services, American Red Cross, hospitals, doctors, nurses, Publix for staying open, and now, school bus drivers and teachers. I am sure the list is long for our heroes.
Thank you, Mayor Esther Manheimer, City Council and others for the updates. So much gratitude to my Massachusetts granddaughter, Rachel Fongeallaz, for all the survival supplies you sent, and my daughter, Marci Taylor, for your supportive advice from Beaufort, S.C. Thank you to all the calls that poured out of our phones when they finally worked. I cried!
Marci also sent Steele Creek Church in Charlotte with two carloads of people with survival supplies to our home. Dreama Colon was in charge of that blessed group. The second family they tried to reach in Fletcher was unreachable because of water.
This has been a spiritual experience that none of us will ever forget. COVID separated us; Helene united us!
On an unrelated but still important note: Ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and other diseases, are still active in the fall. Don’t rake leaves. Ticks breed in moist piles of leaves overnight; get a blower. See The Quiet Epidemic, now streaming.
— Jan Dooley
Asheville
Editor’s note: This letter has been updated from the print version.
