Scouts Perform a Christmas Miracle for Hurricane Victims

Scouts Perform a Christmas Miracle for Hurricane Victims

Three months after Hurricane Florence ravaged the North Carolina coast, Santa Claus showed up early in several hardhit coastal counties. But instead of a bright red suit, the jolly old elf was wearing a Scout uniform.

On Saturday, Dec. 15, storm victims in five counties received 1,803

Credit: Doug Brown

Christmas gifts, 8,925 school supply items, and 1,437 sets of socks and underwear, all donated by Scouts and Scouters in 10 local BSA councils across the eastern United States. (Local Scouts were on hand to sort and organize the donations.) One parent spoke for many, saying, “My two boys will now have a wonderful Christmas. If it weren’t for this, we would have no Christmas.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. Some families had exhausted their FEMA housing allowances and were more focused on putting a roof over their heads than on putting presents under their Christmas trees. Others were finding little reason to celebrate in communities still awash in storm debris. “There are still communities that have debris piled up five feet high all down the road,” says Doug Brown, Scout executive of the East Carolina Council. “Mattresses, chest of drawers, refrigerators, washers, dryers, clothes, insulation, hardwood flooring: you name it and it is just piled up.”

But making Christmas happen was just part of what occurred on Dec. 15. The UPS Freight trucks that delivered all the donations also delivered 22,442 library books and 20 cases of copy paper that were donated to damaged schools. A pair of schools that had lost 5,000 books ended up with 8,900 replacements. Schools that had exhausted their supply budgets were able to copy handouts again. (One man told Brown that his wife,

a teacher, had just received an email from her school saying, “We’re out of money for school supplies; if you want to make copies, you need to bring your own paper,”)

The mammoth project started even before the floodwaters retreated, when Brown began fielding calls from colleagues asking how they could support local relief efforts. As he talked with local officials, United Way leaders, and school superintendents, he decided to focus on a handful of items that would especially benefit children and families. He then gave each participating council an assignment: library books from Chicago, Christmas presents from Louisville, etc. Councils publicized the project through social media, and thousands of Scouts responded by going door to door or collecting donations at pack meetings and troop courts of honor. (The councils that participated are headquartered in Chicago, Ill.; Louisville, Ky.; Appleton, Wisc.; Nashville, Knoxville and Johnson City, Tenn.; Fort Smith and Little Rock, Ark.; and Raleigh and Kinston, N.C.)

Before long, things started to get out of hand. Domtar Corporation in Chicago donated five pallets of paper in honor of workers at their Plymouth, N.C., facility, which was heavily damaged by the storm. SCARCE, a book rescue group in Illinois, donated nearly 11,000 library books, while the Lowe’s Home Improvement distribution center near Nashville donated almost 6,000 more. A Scouter who Brown was meeting with on another topic handed him a check for $1,000 to cover expenses. When he heard there were no expenses — UPS Freight covered shipping costs, and the UPS Store and Bunzl Retail Services donated boxes and pallets — the man told Brown to buy more supplies. So the Scout executive spent the evening before distribution day buying 758 sets of socks and underwear (and five teddy bears).

To Brown, the project was simply a large-scale demonstration of what Scouts do every day. “I know people in eastern North Carolina appreciate what Scouting teaches young people: responsibility, empathy, religious values, respect for others,” he says. “Here’s a tangible way they can see those things that we’re teaching Scouts. It just speaks volumes about the value of Scouting.”

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