The United Way of Pioneer Valley has become one of the lead organizations in overseeing recovery efforts in the affected Western Massachusetts communities.
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The Republican | Lori StabileThomas Gilman, of State Street in Monson, on left, watches as volunteers from the Circle of Faith Group measure the area where they were going to rebuild his pool cabana, which was destroyed by the tornado, on a recent Saturday. In the middle is Robert F. Willis, and on the right is Peter W. Ablondi, chairman of the Monson Circle of Faith. Tornado anniversary
The Republican and MassLive.com present a six-part series marking the first anniversary of the tornadoes that hit Massachusetts:
Sunday: Rebuilding lives: A look at how life and hope for renewal move ahead in the path of the tornadoes
Monday: Remembering the lost: The EF-3 tornado claimed the lives of three people, two in West Springfield and one in Brimfield
Tuesday: Help continues: Thousands of people turned out to volunteer to help in the wake of the tornadoes, and the help continues across the region.
Wednesday: Seeing the forest again: Trees, and the loss of them, are one of the most marked reminders of what was lost in the tornadoes. A look at reforestation efforts.
Thursday: Starting over: For some, life is beginning anew; for others, renewal has yet to arrive
Friday: Rebuilding communities: A community-by-community look at the rebuilding process
From the moment the tornado blew through Western and central Massachusetts on June 1, leveling homes and businesses and uprooting countless lives, volunteers rallied to help their stricken neighbors.
Nearly a year later, the volunteers are still at it, chipping away at the tornado damage to help their neighbors and area residents. Numerous organizations – from the United Way of Pioneer Valley to the American Red Cross – also have contributed, helping residents rebuild.
In Monson, 32 volunteers, many of them from a school group in Mendon, gathered on May 19, helping to clean six properties.
“We’re cutting trees, gathering brush. Basically, we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing all along,” said Wendy J. Deshais, volunteer coordinator for Monson Tornado Volunteers.
Deshais lives in Palmer now, but she called Monson home for 13 years. After the tornado, she knew she had to do something to help her friends in Monson, and she hasn’t stopped since.
“Once I saw the damage and how widespread it was, there was no way I could stay away and not help. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from helping,” Deshais said.
Deshais and fellow volunteer coordinator Alison C. Hill were able to take advantage of a federal grant through FutureWorks that paid them for the work they have been doing since June 1. The grant, which was for a maximum of $12,000, was for six months and intended for unemployed individuals like Deshais and Hill.
The grant money ran out in March, but Deshais and Hill are still overseeing the tornado volunteers. They estimate they’ve sent volunteers to at least 200 homes during the past year.
It’s rewarding to help the families, some of whom are still struggling a year later, and get them closer to normalcy, Deshais said. It’s especially gratifying, she said, if they can cross them off the list and know their needs have been met.
“Some are still faced with this insurmountable amount of work. To them, it seems like it’s never going to end,” Deshais said. “We’re helping people in the community who really need the help. (The tornado) is probably from one of the most catastrophic things in their lives and we’re helping them to be proactive in their recovery.”
Hill says the homeowners truly appreciate the help. She said they have become friends with many of them, going out to dinner together and spending time that doesn’t involve tornado cleanup.
Karen King, a Realtor who founded the Street Angels volunteer team in Monson, also regularly spends her weekends helping families. To date, the angels have given out 45 “welcome home” baskets filled with donated goods to families returning to their newly built or repaired homes.
On a recent Saturday, she was visiting the Gilmans on State Street, with members of Circle of Faith – volunteers from area churches; the First Church of Monson, which was the center of volunteer activity following the tornado, is the lead church. The church volunteers were building the Gilmans a new pool cabana – theirs was torn apart by the tornado.
The granite home with its picturesque gardens has been in Donna Gilman’s family since 1944. She grew up in the house, which was built in 1891. They are still unable to move in because of problems with the new roof that was put on after the tornado ripped off the old one. Thomas E. Gilman, 69, said he is talking to a lawyer about the situation.
Thomas Gilman doesn’t anticipate being able to move back into the home anytime soon. King said it’s important to him that he has his pool ready for Monson’s annual Summerfest celebration in July.
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The Republican/Don TreegerThomas and Donna Gilman stand in front of their home on State Street that was damaged by the tornado that ripped through Monson a year ago.“I’m glad these people are here helping me,” Gilman said. “I can’t even bang a nail straight.”
Gilman said he is very thankful for the help. He became emotional when thanking King. He has had serious health issues since the tornado.
“We’ll give you all the support you need,” King told him as they embraced.
King said she has no intention of stopping her volunteer efforts.
“I know how much everyone appreciates it. I can’t just leave my town now,” King said. “A lot of volunteers have gone on to do other things.”
King recently attended a national conference in Virginia about organizing volunteers after disasters. The United Way of the Pioneer Valley paid for her trip, King siad, and she’s bringing the information back to Monson, where she has been named volunteer coordinator for future disasters.
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Karen King, of Monson.Both King and Gina Lynch, Brimfield’s Senior Center director, were named “unsung heroines” by the state Commission on the Status of Women for their efforts to improve their communities after the tornado.
Lynch says she accepted the award on “behalf of all the volunteers here because it wasn’t just me.”
Lynch put her past skills, honed from running a soup kitchen for the homeless in Salem, into use when she became the face of volunteer efforts for the town of Brimfield.
The First Congregational Church, where her husband, Ian Lynch, is pastor, also houses the Senior Center. It became to go-to place in the days following the tornado, and is still where volunteers interested in helping with weekend cleanups sign up for duty.
“We know more about disasters than we ever wanted,” Lynch said. “Now, everyone knows their neighbors. It was a terrible tragedy that happened in our town, but it’s drawn everyone together in a close-knit way and they will recover.”
Progress has been made in Brimfield, but there is still work to do, Lynch said. They are concentrating on clearing “fire roads” on properties now as a precautionary measure for the forest-fire season to prevent brush fires from spreading to homes.
Still, the physical signs of what happened a year ago still abound. “You leave town just to go shopping, and you come back and it hits you like a lightning bolt, ‘We had a tornado here,’” Lynch said. “Homeowners have been living it for a year.”
A tornado support group meets every Thursday at 6 p.m. at the church for residents. Most residents – whether they had tornado damage or not – have some form of post-traumatic stress from the tornado, Lynch believes; many still experience “serious anxiety” when storms approach now.
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The Republican/Michael BeswickGina Lynch, Brimfield's Senior Center director. She organized volunteer efforts following the tornado in her town.The United Way of Pioneer Valley has become one of the lead organizations in overseeing recovery efforts in the affected Western Massachusetts communities, which also include Agawam, Westfield, West Springfield, Springfield and Wilbraham.
Portia D. Allen, the United Way’s manager of community and volunteer engagement, says the volunteer effort hasn’t tapered off. “If anything, it’s beefed up,” she said.
The United Way joined forces with 17 other organizations to create Springfield Community Together, a long-term recovery group for the city of Springfield. There are similar organizations in place for the other tornado-affected regions, including Raising Hope Together for West Springfield, Westfield and Agawam and Pathways to Renewal for Monson, Wilbraham, Brimfield, Sturbridge and Southbridge. All the groups work together, Allen said.
The groups aim to provide tornado survivors with a single access point to get assistance, according to Allen.
Residents who lacked insurance or who were underinsured are still having problems, Allen said. During a recent visit of tornado-affected properties, the majority still needed some help. They may need new furniture, new siding or windows, as they did not receive enough from insurance to replace them.
Through Springfield Community Together, residents are given help with any unmet needs. Those could include transportation, unemployment, debris cleanup and emotional stress caused by the tornado.
“We think about our group as a group of last resort,” Allen said.
The Springfield Chapter of Rebuilding Together, which also is part of Springfield Community Together, has been instrumental in helping homeowners in the aftermath of the June tornado, city officials said. In October, Rebuilding Together, along with 1,000 volunteers, spent five days rebuilding homes for low-income homeowners. A similar event is scheduled on May 30.
“To date, we have completed 27 homes with just over 100 to go – tornado rebuilding only,” said Colleen Loveless, executive director of Rebuilding Together.
It was a daunting task in the wake of the tornado, and the nonprofit organization takes the approach of one family and one house at a time, Loveless said.
“Our feelings are mixed. There are many tears, both of sadness and joy. There are so many families in need and that still need our help,” she said.
Sarah P. Page, chief advancement officer for the private, non-profit HAP Housing, of Springfield, another partner organization, said the response by volunteers and nonprofit groups in helping tornado victims has been “an amazing process.”
HAP Housing was among groups that immediately responded in the aftermath of the tornado. Other groups, ranging from Catholic Charities to the Red Cross to the Center for Human Development, linked their efforts to providing housing and other aid to people who lost their homes and belongings, Page said.
“We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly,” Page said.
On the morning after the tornado, “our teams were just there, staring to assess people and figure out how to get them housed as fast as possible,” Page said.
HAP Housing continues to focus on housing needs, particularly in Springfield, West Springfield and Monson, Page said. It has received funding for case managers for direct services in those communities, she said.
In Springfield, Ward 3 City Councilor Melvin A. Edwards, who represents the hard-hit Maple- High-Six-Corners neighborhood, said the volunteers who stepped forward to help their neighbors “is just a reflection of the character of the people of Springfield.”
“The nicest quote I heard is that people who were neighbors are now friends,” Edwards said.
Linda Bartlett, the Maple-High-Six-Corners Neighborhood Council’s secretary, said the tornado spurred her to become active in the association again.
“It was a shock to the system to see the devastation in our neighborhood,” Bartlett said.
She and her husband, James, were invited to a meeting by Edwards and “just kind of jumped in with both feet and started helping,” she said.
The association began surveying properties that needed help and notifying the city of the most critical needs, Bartlett said. The city responded, and addressed the priority issues, she said.
‘We have been living in the neighborhood 30 years,” Bartlett said. “The tornado just kind of jarred us. We wanted to do what we could to make it a better place.”
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Lisa C. DeSousa, associate city solicitor in Springfield, praised the Hampden County Bar Association for providing free legal advice to victims of the tornado throughout the past year.
Thomas A. Kenefick, president of the bar association, said the lawyers donated hundreds, if not thousands, of hours, including providing a hotline, free legal advice and representing victims in court.
In West Springfield, the help of volunteers from the community at large as well as from the national service organization AmeriCorps and the Green Shirts from the Christian Reform Church has been integral to recovery work, according to Leyla A. Kayi. She is the volunteer resource and event coordinator for Raising Hope Together, the nonprofit group created to coordinate West Side’s recovery from the tornado.
The Green Shirts had six volunteers work for a week going door-to-door in the Merrick neighborhood, where most of the tornado damage was concentrated. They identified victims and helped Raising Hope Together caseworkers.
The national volunteer organization AmeriCorps has sent two groups of its people to assist the recovery effort in West Springfield. In March, a group of eight spent three weeks in the community, and a second group, comprised of seven people, is wrapping up a four-week stint.
AmeriCorps workers have done such hands-on work as helping clean up branches and other debris as well as clearing away tornado damage in woods at Bear Hole Reservoir.
Staff writers Peter Goonan and Sandra Constantine contributed to this report.
Agawam Mayor Richard Cohen at Town Hall.
