Two Families Find a Blessing After Hurricane Helene

Beth Lewis has worked with Mountain Projects Head Start since 2002, and her husband, Hugh, is a retired long-haul trucker. As they enjoyed a fall evening on the porch of their Bow-legged Valley home recently, Beth thought about how to help households affected by the flood. What could they do to help someone who had lost it all, she wondered? 

The couple had already donated to Sarge’s Animal Rescue Foundation to support care for displaced pets, but didn’t quite know how they could make a difference for people who faced the monumental task of replacing everything they had. 

Hugh turned to her at that moment and asked, “What do you think about donating our camper to a flood survivor?”

“It was weighing heavy on my heart that we needed to do something – and then Hugh was thinking the very same thing – It was a God thing,” says Beth. 

Meanwhile, Michelle and Jeff Parker, of Clyde, had lost everything they owned. They needed a safe, dry and healthy place to stay while they sorted out details with insurance, FEMA and finding a new place to live. 

Now, a short while later, the Parkers have a place to call home and the two families share what they consider a blessing.

“The Lewises are the sweetest people,” says Parker from the camper in its location on a hill in Jonathan Valley.

Beth Lewis says they’ve visited with Michelle several times to help hook up everything and stabilize the RV. “We will not only stay in touch with the Parkers, they are family now,” Lewis said. “Michelle has been a blessing to us,” she added.

After Beth and Hugh Lewis had struck the same note on their porch that evening a few weeks ago, Beth reached out to Mountain Projects Executive Director Patsy Davis to ask if she knew anyone who needed an RV. She did – she and community volunteer Lorelei Garnes had been working to help the Parkers.

“It popped into my head one day that we’re just gonna have to buy a camper,” said Michelle. “That’s all we could afford to live in. So I put it on Facebook, ‘does anybody have a camper?’”

Garnes saw the post, got in touch, and soon the connection was made.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Michelle, who works at a doctor’s office in Sylva, had just helped Jeff home from rehab for a broken leg he suffered before the flood came. Until a short while ago he had no place to call home, but now the spacious camper is in place, and volunteers from St. Paul Methodist of Tabor City have installed steps and a small porch so he can get in and out easily.

Michelle described their experience. The Parkers’ home had been damaged by Tropical Storm Fred in 2021, and repairs had taken two years to complete. Helene was much worse.

The Parkers left before Helene arrived, mainly because of Jeff’s leg, but also because of their three dogs. A neighbor stayed longer and kept them up to date.

“We just took what we needed, because I was assuming it would be like the last time where it just came a little ways up,” said Michelle. “We figured the stuff that was high in the house we’d be able to save, but no, not this time.”

“Our house was just destroyed,” she said. “The water line was inches from the ceiling, and it had tossed around our appliances like they were nothing.”

“This time it took out our whole neighborhood,” she said, describing only hit-and-miss damages from previous floods. “This time it went to the ceiling on every house. It took out the whole middle of Clyde.” 

“When I heard from our neighbor that our house flooded that bad again, I lost it,” said Michelle. “I was like, I’m ready to give up. I’m a strong person, but I was hopeless. I knew how hard it was going through Fred, and I thought ‘I can’t do this again’.”

She described the efforts they’d gone to to recover from Fred, the equity they’d built in their home, and the despair at having lost it all.

But since Helene, volunteers from Calvary Road Baptist Church in Maggie Valley, God’s Pit Crew from Danville,Virginia, and Eight Days of Hope from Tupelo, Mississippi have tackled mold removal and taken the house down to its studs.

The Parkers don’t know what’s next, exactly. Perhaps more house repairs and the risk of another flood. “We have insurance, but it isn’t enough,” says Parker, “FEMA regulations wouldn’t allow homeowners to up the insurance after the last flood.”

Perhaps after major repairs they’ll attempt to sell, but that’s unlikely. And taking the loss and buying another house is out of the question.

They do know they have a reprieve while they search for answers, thanks to the Lewises and people from this community and others.

“Without Lorelei and Mountain Projects and all of these churches that are coming in, none of us would have help,” said Parker. “We aren’t getting help from anywhere else yet. They’re the ones that got this going.”