all of which have been spent with a focus on helping the less fortunate, including those devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
The first of these missions was a private flight chartered by a friend of mine who wanted to deliver much needed items to those left destitute by the devastating hurricane that ravaged much of the Northeastern United States. He asked if I would like to accompany him to deliver much needed supplies including water, medical supplies, clothes and more to an old Catholic Church in the seaside town of Seaside Heights, NJ. When he explained that this was for less fortunate victims of the hurricane we were not certain what to expect. We could hear the stories on the news of those whose lives and families were forever changed by this catastrophic storm. To visit this community to deliver such items was both inspiring and humbling. With nothing but gratitude and an unshakeable drive to do something good, I decided to join my friend. It wasn’t long before I realized I wasn’t even going to be traveling the short distance from Newark to Seaside Heights by air, the majority of the way would be on ground.
The town was in the process of cleaning up from Sandy, and as it was quite evident, just about everyone needed something. In less than an hour, we were greeted by two families, one with two young children, the other with a husband and wife and a single baby boy. The two families each had been affected by the storm in different ways. As the gentleman, named John, and I began to help unload the pallet of goods from our pickup truck, he explained to me that his wife and children had made it through the storm but that it was his elderly mother that had not survived the devastating winds. The family that came with us was not as fortunate. Their home had been totally destroyed. There was only one story in the way of housing for this community, and that was the beach homes. These two families were living on my mind for the rest of that day as well as the next. We shared with them the items we brought and what we could, but it wasn’t enough. My friend was thinking about what he could do to help but I knew that we needed to find a place for the two families to stay. The day after delivering the supplies to this home, we found a place that was suitable for the families to stay in and it was only an eight minute drive from where we delivered the supplies.
What I saw here was a community coming together to help their neighbors. There are no strangers here, just neighbors. There were no politics involved. It was an immediate and open call to help. People donated, and everyone was involved in this call to help. Whether it was the people that donated, who made donations to support the Seaside community, or those who simply did their part in aiding the efforts to help those in need.
The second mission was a little more complicated. It was a larger group of people that wanted to do more than to help those impacted by the storm but wanted to take their efforts further. We were going to support a group in Haiti who were providing shelter for women and children who were displaced by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. The group we were supporting provided a safe place for many of the displaced, who survived by building their own shelters and by living among the ruins, they provided a safe haven for women and children who were alone and in need of assistance. It was important for us to see firsthand the impact the storm had on the people there. I was glad that the group selected us to be their sponsors and they are a group of extraordinary people.
It was also important to me that while we were on this mission to deliver supplies, not to forget that there are many in our own community who need help. There are many people who have not been touched by tragedy but are still in need of our help.
When I arrived back home to Connecticut I was saddened to see the destruction Sandy had left behind, but very energized about the efforts our Connecticut community is already making to help the people there who still need our help. The Connecticut Food Bank was handing out free food, clothing and supplies on Friday at the New Haven Fairfield County Regional Fairgrounds, and the Connecticut Red Cross had also activated a disaster response center.
As I drove through the towns impacted by Sandy, I stopped and spoke with several people. The one thing I heard repeatedly was gratitude for all the assistance the community of Seaside Heights has been getting from the Connecticut residents who came to volunteer or donate, and in some cases both. If it wasn’t for the support from people like me, who had the resources to help Seaside Heights and the Connecticut citizens who were also helping their neighbors, the people of this area would have a much bleaker future ahead of them.
I was amazed by the people who came together to respond to this crisis. They are the type of people that you expect to see in a storybook and it was a true blessing to be able to be a part of it. After seeing the tremendous work this small town of Seaside Heights was doing for those they needed most, I was ready to get back on the road and be a part of something bigger.
As each person responded to their call to duty, something in me resonated. This is the type of people I am blessed to be surrounded by. These are the type of people that give our country that little “something special” that makes this nation great. And they are just ordinary people, they just happen to be people like you and me. There are so many of these people in our country and they deserve the credit that comes with it.
I am sure that many of the people who contributed to this mission had other reasons for doing so, but the one that came to me was that of self-reliance. In a time when so many people were in need, we wanted to know that the people of Seaside Heights would be able to take care of their needs. People need to have the resources that allow them to take care of their own needs, and when you see the love and support being expressed for our neighbors on Long Island it is clear that they are in no shortage of resources to help them through this tough time.
The support we saw for our community was so meaningful to me and it was a reminder that while I will continue to support those in need in my community, I need to do the same for our neighbors as well. It was reassuring to see people of Seaside Heights being so supportive of their neighbors.
I had a chance to sit with a woman from New Jersey. It was only minutes after I met her that she told me a story of how she had worked for years to support her own business but was ready to retire. It was then that I learned the extent to which she and so many of us have worked for our own support, even if it came at a great cost to ourselves.
Sandy didn’t do one thing to our community, it simply confirmed a fact that has always been true. We have been struggling as a country and when the people of a community are going through a difficult time, it does not take much to draw us together. The people I saw from Seaside Heights gave what they could when they could and they did so without the expectation that the community would support them. It was the other way around for me. The people of Connecticut provided what they could when they could and did so with the expectation that Seaside Heights would also be there for them when they needed them.
These examples of help were repeated many times over, but to be honest, I couldn’t fully appreciate it until I walked away from it. In Seaside Heights, there were so many efforts made to help those who were not as fortunate and, now that I was back in my home town I could truly appreciate what they had done.
My message from my visit was, “It does not matter where you are from, what makes a community great is how they help each other.” No one should be living in a community where they feel forgotten, where their needs are
