Community steps up, Mary’s Home parishioner delivers emergency aid to area affected by hurricane

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“If you feel the need to do something and you just can’t let it go, you should do it.”

Aaron Kempker offered that advice after making a massive delivery to a hurricane-ravaged area of Tennessee this month.

“I also recommend having a good group of friends to help you,” he said. “It might grow into something you weren’t expecting ... like it did with me.”

Mr. Kempker is a member of Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Mary’s Home.

He and a group of friends recently delivered three large trailers of bottled water, nonperishable food, disposable diapers and other emergency necessities to Erwin, Tennessee.

The area was recently swamped with record rainfall from Hurricane Helene.

Mr. Kempker saw videos of the flooding on TV and social media.

“I knew I had to do something,” he said. “I asked my wife about it several times. I didn’t know what to do. It was all I could think about for a few days.

“I couldn’t let it go,” he said. “Something was making me do it. I don’t know what.”

He decided to gather up whatever provisions he could and take them to where they’d do the most good.

“These people had lost everything,” he noted. “I remember thinking that if it was me, I would be hoping someone would do something to help me.

“There wasn’t a whole lot I could do, but doing something is better than doing nothing,” he said. “I never would have dreamed that it would have gotten to where it got.”

A Facebook request for donations brought an impressive response.

“I thought we’d be lucky enough to fill a cargo trailer,” said Mr. Kempker. “It quickly turned into ‘I’m taking a bigger trailer.’ That quickly turned into ‘I need more people.’”

Word got around. Students from Cole County R-V Schools gathered items. Individuals and local businesses chipped in money.

A business in Linn set up a drop-off location.

“We wound up with a little over $14,000 in donations in less than a week,” Mr. Kempker noted.

He’s amazed at how people from his community and beyond stepped up to help.

“It was overwhelming at times,” he said. “But, I was very proud of the community for all the help and hard work. I certainly couldn’t have done it alone, that is for sure.” 

He spent most of the money on bulk quantifies of items on the official request list.

He spent the week sorting the items, with help from his wife, Jessica, their three oldest children, and some friends.

They and a group of volunteers then spent an evening stacking and securing the items onto pallets and lifting them onto flatbed trailers with a Bobcat.

Mr. Kempker; his grandfather, June; and several friends from work departed at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9.

“I got back to my driveway at 3 p.m. on the 11th,” he said.

In between, they traveled some 1,500 miles.

He found out ahead of time that Crossroads Community Church in Newport was accepting donations in a large warehouse just outside the area of devastation.

Volunteers from all over the country were there to assist.

Mr. Kempker described it as “a smooth chaos operation down there.”

“They had a whole pile of forklifts and pallet jacks,” he said. “It took them about 15 minutes to unload all of it.”

Volunteers will distribute the items to people left homeless by the flooding.

“The town we went to had been flooded, but the water had gone down by time we got there,” said Mr. Kempker.

“It must have happened so fast,” he said. “You couldn’t tell from the outside what happened on the inside, but there was stuff sitting out on the street from people cleaning out the buildings. So you knew the water got in there.”

The volunteers who received the donations at the warehouse were greatly appreciative, “but they didn’t even have time to sit down,” said Mr. Kempker.

He wanted to take a picture before he left, but he decided not to ask.

“It was so busy there and everyone had a purpose, and I didn’t want to take away from that purpose,” he said.

Mr. Kempker’s whole family had to make sacrifices for the operation to be successful.

My wife and I, we made it work,” he said. “It was just a weeklong deal.

I did a lot of planning, a lot of running around, and she did a lot of ‘single-parenting’ at home,” he said, “taking care of our kids so I could get this stuff accomplished.

“And after the kids were in bed, she would help me with whatever I was doing,” he noted. “It could not have happened without her, that’s for sure.”

Their children were proud to be a part of it.

“They’re talking,” said Mr. Kempker. “Saying things like, ‘You’re taking this to the people with no houses.’”

What he believes he’ll remember most about the whole operation is how thankful all the people were, and how many volunteers were there to help.

“They had people from everywhere — some from as far away as Colorado,” he said.

“It’s pretty cool that people halfway across the country came together for something like this — that we’re still able to do that,” he said.

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