Volunteers turn out to fill bellies

FERNDALE - It was sunny and hot, and Peter Stuckey had been using a chain saw for hours, cutting up trees felled by an EF4 tornado that ripped through the state last Sunday.

Shortly before noon, Stuckey sat down on a piece of timber to take a break. Then he admired a hot dog.

“Look at that,” he said, examining the wiener and bun with his dirt-flecked hands.“That’s not a cheap dog right there. That’s a real one.”

Stuckey, an information-technology worker at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was among hundreds of people who volunteered to help Ferndale tornado victims clean up Saturday. But there were dozens of others who decided to take care of the volunteers by feeding them.

Casey Rine and other members of Pleasant Valley Church of Christ towed two large grills from Little Rock to Ferndale and cooked about 300 hamburgers and hot dogs Saturday. The food was wrapped in foil, placed in plastic-foam boxes and delivered to volunteer cleanup crews who were working mostly along a hilly stretch of Bandy Road.

Rine, a youth pastor, said the church had cooked more than 1,200 hot dogs for tornado victims and volunteers in Mayflower, Vilonia and Paron before traveling Saturday to Ferndale.

“This is one of the last things that people think of. They’re ready to go in and work, ready to go in and hit the ground running,” Rine said. “However, the food and the water and all those kinds of things are pushed to the side, so when we’re able to come in and do a simple thing like grill a burger, then it really helps those workers to keep doing what they’re doing.”

Members of Mt. Bethel Baptist Church in Arkadelphia cooked more than 250 hot dogs and hamburgers for volunteers in addition to beans and coleslaw, the Rev. Brett Bagwell said.

“Volunteers got to eat, as well,” Bagwell said. “They’re out in the field working. They’re getting tired. They’re getting exhausted. We want to make sure that all the volunteers that are working are fed really well.”

West Pulaski Fire Chief Ronnie Wheeler said that by noon, 826 people - some from as far as central Kentucky - had signed up as volunteers at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Ferndale.

The church was the headquarters for Saturday’s cleanup efforts. While smoke poured from the grills outside, tables inside the church were stacked with tray after tray of homemade food donated for volunteers - sandwiches, brownies, gyros, pies, cookies and cake.

“God has sent it as we need it,” said Linda Crawford, who served volunteers lunch Saturday.

Delivering food to volunteers in some areas was tricky. Dierna Koon and her husband loaded their Buick Enclave with boxes of hot dogs, but sections of Bandy Road and many side roads were still impassable, littered with mangled trees. Also, the narrow road was cluttered with trucks, all-terrain vehicles and trailers.

At some points, Koon got out of her vehicle, stacked the boxes in her arms and walked down gravel paths and dirt roads to deliver food, sidestepping debris along the way.

“Food,” volunteers excitedly yelled over the buzz of saws.

Stuckey sat down for the meal with Chris Bondurant, a Web developer at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Their boxes - delivered by Koon - also came with Laffy Taffy.

“What’s the best time to go to the dentist? At tooth-thirty,” Bondurant read aloud from the wrapper, chuckling.

Above the two was a helicopter lifting twisted metal and power lines from a nearby electrical tower knocked down by the tornado. The helicopter was transporting the wreckage to a removal site on Kanis Road, passing back and forth over the home of Grady Worden.

A deck on the second floor of Worden’s home was slumped over, several windows were broken, and there were tarps covering gashes in the roof.

“Trees were all on the house,” said Worden’s brother, Charles.

Nailed to one of the few trees left standing on the property was a sign with “WAR ZONE” spray-painted in large, black letters.

“With that helicopter, it is like Vietnam out here,” Charles Worden said, standing next to a huge uprooted tree.

But there was another sign on the property that said, “Thank you! We truly appreciate your help! Bless you!”

Volunteers like Stuckey and Bondurant, as well as friends of the Worden family, had made the property look “pretty phenomenal” compared with when the tornado struck, Charles Worden said.

“We’ve had all this help, so we’ve made great progress,” he said.