Gordon couple shares volunteer story

DBell@CalhounTimes.com

Sugar Valley residents Raymond and Janice Hobby said it is one thing to see the devastation that follows a tornado on television, but quite another thing entirely to see the widespread destruction and recovery efforts in person.

The couple spent several days over the past couple of weeks volunteering in Murray County to help clean up debris and find belongings, sometimes working in groups of up to 50 and other times working with smaller groups or just as the pair of them.

They shared photos and stories from their experience with the Calhoun Times this week.

“The most rewarding part was to find all those pictures, and it was just in a landfill, just in a big pile of garbage and stuff,” said Janice, who took the photos home. “It was just really rewarding to go through the pictures. I started with a soft toothbrush just to clean the mud and debris off of them but realized just a soft Kleenex would work. It was amazing to realize how clean you could get those pictures just by brushing them off with a Kleenex. And then when we returned ... the lord allowed us to meet somebody whose pictures we’d found. And the woman was so grateful, she said, ‘I’m so glad you found these because my husband is not alive anymore.’

And we had found a picture of him with his family.”

The Hobbys had trained previously with a group specifically dedicated to storm recovery, but that group was sending people elsewhere, so they took it upon themselves to join the effort in Murray County.

They spent the first few volunteer days hauling wood and sorting debris into dif

ferent piles based on the type of material, and then later they helped search for things and provide moral support to residents.

They spoke about one individual who still had two black eyes from being struck by an air conditioning unit and who was sorting through the scattered remains of his residence.

VOLUNTEERS,

He tended to drift around, speaking to folks who wandered up, as the Hobbys sorted through his belongings.

Each time he returned he would apologize, saying he was having a hard time focusing.

“Raymond had an opportunity to pray with him before we left. That was really meaningful for us to encourage him. That’s what’s most important, with everything gone, we can cry out to God,” Janice said. “We saw a lot of people who suffered a lot of loss.”

The couple worked mostly at and around homes, but they also visited a chicken farm that had been nearly wiped out. The remnants of the chicken houses were spread far and wide.

“It was massive,” Raymond said. “It was a huge debris field.”

In another location, they worked on one side of the street where very little debris surrounded the foundation where a mobile home had stood, while the home and its contents where spread and scattered all over the other side of the street. Where the home had been, only the foundation, a tipped over pickup truck and a trampoline remained.