It isn’t uncommon for retirees to head over the border once winter weather comes to Thompson but a local couple’s recent southern excursion wasn’t about taking it easy but more about giving something back.
Louise Hodder and former CBC Radio North Country Host Mark Szyszlo were in North Carolina in October working as Red Cross shelter managers in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.
“It arrived as a level one hurricane so the winds weren’t as ferocious, a lot of people lost shingles, trees were blown down but it wasn’t as devastating as the most recent hurricane that hit Florida which was Michael which was a level five,” says Szyszlo. “Florence,on the other hand, soaked everything. it was a biblical rainfall that likely is never going to be repeated again. Not a single person in the community was untouched.”
Hodder, who fully retired in September 2017, a few months after Szyszlo, has been a Red Cross volunteer for five years and has a pair of previous stints as a shelter manager in Winnipeg for wildfire evacuees. Syzszlo started volunteering about a year ago and has completed four training courses to rise to a supervisory role. While working in disaster areas may not seem like a restful retirement plan, Hodder says it is something they can do together that aligns with their passions.
“As we approached retirement, we thought, ‘Well, what can we do?’ because we love to to travel,“ Hodder says. “If we join the Red Cross, we can volunteer locally we can volunteer nationally or internationally. We see it as an adventure along with helping people that obviously need a lot of help. This is our first out of country deployment."
When the initial call came for Canadian volunteers to help out with relief efforts came in September, Szyszlo and Hodder weren’t prepared to head right off. When a second call came, they submitted an application and were on their way to North Carolina within a few days.
And while both say they found the experience rewarding, it wasn’t exactly relaxing, as they had one day off in 18 days and slept on cots very similar to those that shelter users did.
“There were no creature comforts for us as Red Cross workers,” said Szyszlo. “You were working in 12-hour, 13-hour shifts each day so it’s long days lots of decisions, lots of people to co-ordinate.”
“You determine what needs to get done and assign that to the volunteers, everything from doing daily inventory and submitting it to doing a count, ensuring your registration and heads in beds match up and, if not, why,” Hodder says. “That’s what we’re trained in so we enjoy that part of actually working directly in the shelter. “
As difficult as some parts of it may have been, what the Thompsonites went through was nothing compared to what North Carolinians endured.
“It was not uncommon to drive a street and see every second house with blue tarps on the roof from shingles blown off or to see trees cut down,” said Hodder. “The city couldn't keep up with hauling things away. Even when we left, which would have been the fourth week, there were still piles of furniture and mattresses sitting out on people’s front lawns.”
“Some people hadn't gotten around to it yet but others were well in the process of recovering but then the people we were looking after were different,” Szyszlo said. “They’d lost everything and so that’s where they ended up, in a Red Cross shelter .
There were 128 shelter residents at the time they arrived in Burgaw, which Szyszlo describes as a Mayberry-esque town near the city of Wilmington, to help out and about 50 by the time they left. But as big as the Red Cross relief effort was, the pair say they were impressed by how the area’s residents pulled together to make sure no one went wanting.
“There were many organizations that just walked up to the shelter every day and asked if we needed help, especially church organizations,” Hodder says. “They were very, very helpful in terms of preparing meals, offering food, clothing, anything people needed. One church organization came in, met with the clients and offered to take them out of state, give them jobs, accommodations, that sort of thing so it was certainly a community effort to get everyone back on their feet again.”
“It’s amazing to see that level of charity in action,” said Szyszlo. “It’s amazing to see that kind of community togetherness.”
For Hodder and Szyszlo, the biggest reward was helping people who were near the end of their rope cope with the hardships they faced.
“People there don’t either have the means or the ability to pay for medical treatment and so coming to the shelter is their way of getting some kind of relief,” Szyszlo said “This fellow had his stomach drained and they pulled like 10 litres of fluid off his stomach and he was the crankiest old guy and he comes back to the shelter just happy as a tack and his problems are resolved so there’s people you find ways of helping.”
“A lot of them had health challenges and a number of people were in wheelchairs, people that were on oxygen,” said Hodder. “Those were the hardest, of course, to get out of the shelter and get relocated but when we left there were a lot of community organizations working on getting the elderly and the ill people into homes and getting them taken care of.”
One of the things that shelter residents found fascinating was that Hodder and Szyszlo were from Canada and weren't getting paid for their efforts.
“In our shelter, we were the only two Canadians,” said Hodder. “People learned that we’re from Canada and they’re like, ‘You came all the way from Canada to help us?’ They were just so grateful and they couldn't believe.They could not believe that so many people would come out and help them and not get paid for it.”
