Who we are can be tested in the worst of times. In recent years, Kentucky has had its share of those. Once-in-a-lifetime disasters now seem to come in waves, wrecking communities, unhousing folks, obliterating life savings, costing jobs and ending lives. Those not directly in the path of destruction may have loved ones who were, but most all of us know the shock of that first bulletin, then the drone-filmed wreckage, and then the individual stories of trauma and loss, and finally, the rush of first responders, those brothers and sisters of mercy who drop all at a moment’s notice. After that, there’s the slow, uneven communal trudge toward some level of a normality that was snuffed out in an instant, as those left relatively unaffected might turn their weary eyes elsewhere.
Since 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has issued 13(!) disaster declarations in our state. One of the most horrific events was the tornado of Dec. 10, 2021. An EF4 twister with up to 190-mile-per-hour winds cut across 165.7 miles, the longest path for a tornado in U.S. history. It left 57 dead and up to 533 injured. The Graves County seat of Mayfield lost more than 60 businesses, eight historic churches, and more than 1,760 housing and rental units, along with its courthouse, fire department, police station, power grid and water treatment plant.
That same evening, four EF3 tornadoes bombed Dawson Springs and Bowling Green, killing 18 more and injuring another 133. That night marked the deadliest December tornado outbreak ever recorded in the United States.
If this article was a book, it would profile hundreds of heroes and their stories, but it isn’t a book. Space limits us to a small sampling of stories, and they cannot do the justice that’s deserved—the consolation being that none of these folks seeks the limelight. Recognition is not what they ask, but the stories aren’t for them. They’re for us.
Camp Graves
Micah Seavers, the son of an itinerant preacher, is one of the extroverted characters for which Kentucky is so famous. Before the storm, Seavers ran a kids’ camp in Graves County and owned (and still owns) Southern Red’s Barbecue (named when Seavers had a full head of red hair that’s now retreated to a beard only), a down-home restaurant in the Graves County community of Water Valley, Kentucky (population 235). The tornado sidestepped Seavers and his family, but he didn’t stop to count his blessings. Instead, he rushed to Mayfield to lend a hand and was met there by an emergency manager who informed Seavers that he could best help by using his restaurant to feed the hungry. This he did, opening his restaurant to the flood of victims, volunteers and emergency responders. By 4 a.m. Saturday morning, he’d prepared some 500 meals and kept feeding folks for weeks at no charge. He also led a team that delivered fuel to homes cut off as a result of damaged lines (remember, it was December). Next, Walking Humbly Outdoor Adventures (WHOA) opened their 45-bed kids’ camp, welcoming the disaster displaced.
With vacant farmland and no lack of ingenuity, he, friend Buck and sister Christina quickly formed a charity they named Camp Graves and used it as temporary housing for those who’d lost their living quarters (some 65 percent of whom were renters). Seemingly overnight, Camp Graves became a sanctuary. People who’d been displaced into jam-packed lodges, consigned to the floor or couch in someone’s home, or thrown out into the street moved from oft-unwelcome circumstances into safe and secure lodging in an environment that gave hope in the face of trauma.
Seavers knows about temporary living quarters and crowded houses. His dad took the family all over the map, and Seavers can’t remember a time in those days when his family didn’t host strangers in their home because they had no place else to go. His generous spirit materializes in many ways, including spontaneously. He once gave his boots and socks to an elderly man and continued his errands barefoot in 4 inches of snow.
Mayfield Graves LTRG
Few of us had heard of Long-Term Recovery Groups (LTRGs) before the Mayfield tornado. These are county-wide organizations that sprout up after a disaster. Some groups work better than others, and the one that arose after the Mayfield disaster, the Mayfield Graves LTRG, has been one of the best. The mission of these entities is to organize, coordinate, direct traffic, take in and direct (“leverage”) donations, support case managers, organize volunteers, and oversee the massive and multiple efforts devoted to recovery. To work, such organizations require good and selfless leaders as well as deference by local elected leaders, who may be inclined to rush in and control the narrative and the gush of donated money.
The LTRG started as an idea proposed by FEMA, the Red Cross and Jim Garrett. The Community Foundation of West Kentucky, with particular credit to Chris Dockins, embraced the concept, gave it life, and supported it until it was ready to take off on its own in May 2022. Leadership came about organically from the meetings of some 60 charities and other well-wishers and do-gooders with the appointment of Ryan Drane as executive director and the selection of the board of the organization.
Drane was an active member of Mayfield First United Methodist Church, one of the churches that was demolished and was already knee-deep in recovery efforts. He shuttered his consulting business (temporarily, he believed at the time) and committed to a six-month term that ended up lasting five times that. At some point, he came to realize that he could never go back to his former life.
Help came from all corners. The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, the James Graham Brown Foundation, the Thoroughbred Society, the Red Cross, the United Way, the Dollar General Foundation and the Community Foundation of West Kentucky were some of the larger donors, but there were others and a volume of smaller gifts of time and treasure that added up. In addition to standing up the warehouses at the fairgrounds, the LTRG and these donors devised and started a program called New Lease on Life, which involved salvaging damaged or blighted homes, fitting them up, and leasing them to families, creating an easy pathway to home ownership. Among other things, each of the homes had tornado shelters. The program grew so large that it’s now its own charitable organization.
Leadership: Kathy O’Nan and Jesse Perry
City and county government had their hands full rebuilding government infrastructure. City Hall was obliterated, along with the judicial center and other government offices. I first met Mayfield’s top official in a 24/7 gym, where she had located her makeshift office. Mayor Kathy O’Nan combines an infectious larger-than-life personality with a deeply gentle spirit, and her unstated goal of being everywhere at once didn’t keep her from being on time with us. O’Nan led what she called Sticky Note Sessions, to which all residents were invited and were encouraged to offer input on priorities. This they did by placing their “sticky votes” on posterboards.
Graves County Judge Executive Jesse Perry gets similar high marks for working collaboratively at all levels, including personally handing out items, helping with donation management, and kickstarting the critical need for storage and warehousing at the county fairgrounds. Both respected the need for LTRG autonomy, but both gave support and collaboration that has made for such a great recovery story.
People Helping People
Assistance came from all over Kentucky and from all over the map. The Amish and the Mennonites brought their tradition of working together in disaster recovery and of collaborating with other relief organizations. Their work ethic and extraordinary skills were focused on the physical repair and rebuilding of homes. They also provided emotional and spiritual support to survivors. Out of nowhere, a busload of college students showed up from Howard University in Washington, D.C., to help in the rebuilding effort.
The wonderful Lawrence Leahy, disaster recovery officer and philanthropic advisor for FEMA, dropped into town from forest fires out West and helped tie together the charitable sector. Jaye Herrick showed up with her own trailer and tirelessly assisted in the effort for six months, then left to help out at some other disaster. Six months later, she was back for another six-month stint.
Drane told me how invaluable Herrick’s expertise was, that she knew her stuff and could even run a construction crew. Volunteers and charities from my hometown of Paducah jumped in and lent valuable assistance.
The Most Honorable Order
My entrée into this arena came from my position as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. HOKC board and staff immerse themselves in disaster recovery, and each of us tries to emulate the spirit and generosity we always witness in these sad settings. Kentucky Colonels from all over the globe show their generosity, making individual contributions to HOKC and entrusting us to apply them where they have the most beneficial impact. It’s a mission we all learn through direct involvement in our Good Works Program, reapplied and reengineered here, and one that is sacred to each of us.
All the political divides and hostility on social media become irrelevant when our fellow Kentuckians need food and shelter, and it’s nothing less than life-affirming to have a front-row seat to the true and timeless nature of our Commonwealth and its citizens. The tornados and storms always start small, with a little wind and a bit of rain, and grow and darken to inflict their devastation. On the side of relief, HOKC does something similar in response, starting small and growing into a source of light and hope. We are part of a vast circulatory system that receives and then returns in the form of time and money, that gives and saves and enriches the lives of our sisters and brothers, our children and our elders. It doesn’t take much at all to join us. Please do.