Red Cross can help

I've had a busy couple of days!  Yesterday I played bridge and afterwards, stopped by my Mom's house for a visit.  We only live about 20-30 minutes away but I'm really bad about not stopping by to visit more often.  After being away from family for 30+ years, it's just been hard to adjust to having family so close.  I have to stop and think every so often how I'd feel if the shoe was on the other foot and it was my daughter not stopping by to visit me!! 

Last night after dinner, Sonny and I were just settling in to catch up on some tv shows we'd taped and had just finished scooping our ice cream in our bowls when we got a call from the Red Cross DAT (disaster) team leader.  We are volunteers for the DAT team and have been for almost a year but have never been called to a disaster.  Every few months, we have the DAT bag for the week and are "on call" but the pager has never gone off.  We figured it really didn't work!!  The gal who had the bag this week knew we had never gone out so when she got the call, she called us to assist her ... plus the house fire was in Troutman which is not too far from us.  By the time we got there (about 11 pm) there were about 5-6 firetrucks and numerous other vehicles.  The fire had been put out but the double-wide trailer was demolished.  The poor lady who lived alone luckily was not at home when the fire started.  She is 56 years old and has a lot of health issues.  Poor thing was just so upset.  The worst part was she had no insurance!!  How can people do that??  She had lived there for 22 years and everything she owned is now gone.  Every few minutes she'd cry out about something that had perished .... from her church clothes, her hats, her 27 wigs, a whole library of old books and the paperwork she had started to get her GED.  She told us she was always the one who helped her family out when they needed something.  She said she used to pay into the United Way when she worked and never dreamed one of those types of services would one day be assisting her.  The Red Cross can't do as much as it once could due to the recession but we were able to give her a debit card with money on it for food, clothing and three days in a motel.  We told her when she found an apartment or somewhere to live, we would pay her first month's rent also. 

All day today I have thought about this poor lady and gone back and forth from feeling sorry to other thoughts.  And here are my reasons.  Last night while talking to the client, she told me she had just pawned her jewelry so she could buy a VCR/DVD combo and hadn't even watched it once .... on her flat screen TV that she bought this year.  She said she had a 72" TV that she had bought in 2007.  She had muscle/nerve damage to her arm and told me she has gone to therapy a few times for it and was supposed to go more often, but it was too expensive - they want $50 for therapy!  Hello???  You can afford the tv, DVD, etc. but not do the things the dr advises to make you feel better.   I know everyone has the right to spend their money the way they see fit (even our government!!) but I just have to shake my head.  My friend at Red Cross told me the client called today with many questions regarding more assistance and wanted to know if the Red Cross would pay a downpayment on a new trailer to put on her lot!!  

The Red Cross is a great organization and is there to help in times of need.  If you like to help people, I urge you to consider volunteering with the Red Cross.  They provide all the training you need so you will be ready to respond to disasters, work at blood drives, deliver messages to US Service personnel, re-connect families that have been displaced.  My husband drives a Red Cross van each week taking people in our community to doctor appointment, dialysis, etc.


Here are some Red Cross facts for you:

Volunteers constitute 96 percent of the total work force to carry on their humanitarian work:


Every year the Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters—including approximately 150 home fires every day.


About 11 million Americans turn to them to learn first aid, CPR, swimming, and other health and safety skills. Last year, more than 158,000 people volunteered to teach those courses.


Half the nation's blood supply— six million pints annually—is collected by more than 155,000 Red Cross volunteers .


Among their emergency services for the men and women of the armed forces is the delivery of urgent family messages—around the clock and around the globe.


More than 30,900 volunteers serve as chairs, members of boards of directors, or on advisory boards for local Red Cross units - chapters, Blood Services regions, and military stations.


As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross reconnects more than 8,000 families separated by conflicts and disasters around the world through international tracking services and Red Cross messages.

Tonight my sisters, mom and Sonny and I went to downtown Charlotte to the Levine Museum of the South for a program about Hurricane Hugo.  Hugo hit the Charlotte area 20 years ago.  I didn't live here at the time, but my family all lived in Charlotte and still have nightmares about that storm.  Hugo ranked as the eleventh most intense hurricane at time of landfall to strike U.S. this century and is rated as the second costliest hurricane with over $7 billion in damages. Hugo's storm surge was the highest ever recorded on the East Coast. It was estimated at 20 feet just north of Charleston. Hugo's 150 mile wide swath destroyed about one billion board feet of timber and resulted in major damage hundreds of miles inland. The total number of deaths associated with Hurricane Hugo is 82.  The exhibit was sponsored by the Red Cross which I didn't know until shortly before we went tonight.  It was a very interesting exhibit.  I thought it would have been much larger, but they did a good job with what they did have.

Tomorrow will be a little more slow paced!  I'll be hiding away to eat my meals though!  Sonny is scheduled for a routine colonosophy on Thursday so tomorrow will be a liquid diet for him.