Diocese responds to flood disaster

Diocesan pastoral teams reach out to residents in need of spiritual, physical, emotional, and financial support

By Dan McWilliams

Bishop Mark Beckman was able to see firsthand the ministry to victims of flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in visits to Erwin and Hampton on Oct. 2.

The bishop met with Glenmary Father Tom Charters, associate pastor of St. Michael the Archangel in Erwin, where three parishioners died. Father Charters has been extremely busy in the wake of the disaster dealing with a constantly ringing telephone with people asking for aid, granting interviews to national networks, and helping to coordinate the relief effort at the Unicoi County church.

Also on the ground floor of assistance to victims is Father Pontian Kiyimba, AJ, parochial administrator of Good Shepherd in Newport, which lost two parishioners to the flooding.

Bishop Beckman was accompanied by Father David Boettner, rector of Sacred Heart Cathedral; Deacon David Duhamel, executive director of Catholic Charities of East Tennessee; Sister Mary Lisa Renfer, RSM, the physician who leads the St. Mary’s Legacy Clinic for the diocese; and Blanca Primm, diocesan director of Hispanic Ministry.

The ministry team visited not only St. Michael the Archangel but also St. Elizabeth Church in Elizabethton and nearby Hampton, which saw heavy damage from the flooding, before finishing its travels at St. Mary Church in Johnson City, a point of distribution for assistance to victims.

‘Pour forth Your Spirit’

Bishop Beckman entered St. Michael the Archangel Church as a grief-support group was meeting. Its members included a man who survived the flooding who worked at hard-hit Impact Plastics and another man who lost his wife in the disaster.

“Buenos tardes. I am sorry for your loss. I’m praying for you all,” the bishop said in greeting them.

Bishop Beckman then led a prayer for the men and women and for those they have lost.

“O God, pour forth Your Spirit upon this community of faith gathered in Your name. Lord, hold them in the palm of your hand,” the bishop prayed in part, before embracing each member of the group.

While the diocese is providing considerable assistance to victims of the flooding, a simple gesture like a hug can make a difference, the bishop said at St. Michael the Archangel.

“I think sometimes the most important thing people need to know is that they’re not alone,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t do anything to erase the loss that they’ve experienced, but to know that they’re not alone in it matters, and so I think our presence here today is a reminder God is with us. We’re not alone, no matter what we experience. I got a sense that they were very grateful that we were here.”

Bishop Beckman said he was impressed by the response Deacon Duhamel and others throughout the diocese have given when the calls for assistance came in.

“The response has been overwhelming. Seeing what Catholic Charities is doing, a lot of the volunteers, right here Father Tom and his team here at the parish—they’ve done incredible outreach and ministry,” the bishop said.

Father Charters, Father Kiyimba, and other priests in the areas affected by flooding are finding themselves in another kind of ministry: simply being there for those who have lost loved ones.

“The ministry of presence is the most important ministry, and it’s being with people and accompanying them, whatever is going on in their lives, and that means also the sorrow and the loss and the trauma of life,” Bishop Beckman said.

Deacon Duhamel drove a pickup truck loaded with donations to help St. Michael the Archangel on Oct. 2 as he transported Bishop Beckman, Father Boettner, and Sister Mary Lisa to Erwin.

“It’s been a hectic, fast-paced environment, just trying to get as much information on people’s needs in the northeast part of our diocese, working hand in hand with the different parishes, trying to identify the resources they need, and then pushing those resources up to those communities,” Deacon Duhamel said.

Plenty of water has gone to the affected sites in upper East Tennessee.

“I have procured truckloads of water with our partnership with Catholic Charities USA,” Deacon Duhamel said. “We’ve gotten four truckloads of water to the different mountain communities, two up to Mountain City, another to Newport, and another to Johnson City.”

Catholic Charities is “trying to meet as much of the physical needs” of people “as possible,” Deacon Duhamel added.

“We have emergency monies available to people who are in need,” he said. “We’re putting people up in hotels who have lost their houses. We’re providing food and meals to people. We went shopping the other day with three families that had their homes totally destroyed, just getting basic necessities for them to live and try to start rebuilding their lives.”

Having Bishop Beckman onsite Oct. 2 where those who are suffering and receiving aid is huge, Deacon Duhamel noted.

“I think it’s incredibly important that the people of this diocese as well as the community at large see the shepherd working with his flock,” he said.

Deacon Duhamel is coordinating assistance to flood victims coming both from inside and outside the diocese. The Knights of Columbus of Father James E. Waters Council 12017 in Wilmington, N.C., sent a truck to the diocese on the same day of the group’s visit to Erwin.

“We have a box truck coming in to Johnson City. It’s a pre-positioned shipment that’s put together by the Knights (in Wilmington) as well as Catholic Charities USA,” Deacon Duhamel said. “They pushed that to us, and it’s coming up late this afternoon.”

Outside help has been coming in as Catholic Charities tries to “serve four to five different sites where people are coming to us in need,” Deacon Duhamel said.

“We initially started focusing getting our external resources from Catholic Charities USA, the national level of St. Vincent de Paul, the national level of the Knights of Columbus, and the state level of the Knights of Columbus,” he said. “We’ve started pushing and getting their support to help us get supplies from outside of our region because the region itself is experiencing shortfalls in the water and supplies. Those are the organizations that we’ve been working with. We’ve also been calling up private vendors and trying to buy water. We bought some water up in Kingsport, and St. Dominic [Parish] was great to help us move that water from Kingsport down into Johnson City.”

As the bishop’s group concluded its visit at St. Mary Church in Johnson City, Bishop Beckman met with pastor Father Dustin Collins outside the church, where a Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., Catholic Charities truck was parked. The truck had brought supplies to East Tennessee.

Bishop Beckman happened on a St. Mary youth group that was meeting and preparing to eat dinner. The volunteer kitchen staff also fed the bishop’s traveling party. Bishop Beckman led a prayer to the Holy Guardian Angels, whose memorial was that day, as well as a blessing for the meal.

“Right here at St. Mary, you all have been a real help, lots of volunteers reaching out to your neighbors, and that is a beautiful, beautiful sign of living Christian community,” the bishop told the youth.

Father Dustin Collins, pastor of St. Mary, noted that Johnson City was spared by Helene, which allows that parish to be an effective distribution center for flood relief.

“The affected area around us is mainly Erwin and Mountain City. Johnson City is in good condition,” Father Collins said. “There was a need of items for Mountain City. Eventually we were approached as being a hub for Catholic Charities. There have been countless donations, even from other states such as Michigan and Iowa.”

Father Collins pointed out how the parish’s food pantry has been instrumental in the effort.

“Our food pantry volunteers took over to make everything possible. They were further assisted by various members of our parish such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Knights of Columbus, the Council of Catholic Women, and Hispanic ministries,” he added. “We have provided support to the food pantry in their work.”

And like St. Mary, St. Dominic Parish in Kingsport was largely unaffected by the storm, which has allowed it to focus on supporting the relief work.

“St. Dominic raised over $20,000 in a second collection to aid victims of the hurricane, and it has sent two truckloads of donated items through the distribution centers,” said Father Michael Cummins, pastor of St. Dominic and dean of the Five Rivers Deanery that covers upper East Tennessee. “In addition to the items and funds we’ve collected, our support is mainly through prayer and fraternity.”

Father Charters spoke on Oct. 7, one day after NBC recorded an entire Sunday Mass at St. Michael the Archangel for a national special.

Ministering to their counties

The Glenmary priest said his ministry is not so much toward the victims, “it’s ministering to the county and the needs of the county. We’re one of the three big centers here in the county: the high school, the ecumenical Care & Share center, and then our parish. We’ve been accumulating a lot of items for various needs. A couple of pods have been put out here to store the items because we’ve got so many. People are coming and getting items. We have a lot of parish volunteers who are here. We usually open about 8 in the morning and are supposed to close at 5 but are still here beyond that.”

Father Charters said his ministry with those who have died has basically involved going to the funeral home accompanied by a grief counselor and by Lorena Reynoso, St. Michael the Archangel’s Hispanic minister, religious-education director, and youth minister who also is a longtime parishioner.

On Oct. 7, Father Charters was preparing for one parishioner’s funeral. Another victim of the flooding will have her body taken back to Mexico after her funeral, he said. The body of the third victim had not been found as of that date.

Father Charters said it was “very valuable” to have Bishop Beckman visit. He accompanied the bishop on a visit to flood-damaged areas in Erwin on Oct. 2.

“Actually, the value for me was, he wanted to see the damage, and I hadn’t been down there because I didn’t have an interest to go down because I figured it would be a mess trying to get through,” Father Charters said, adding that the floodwaters came within an eighth of a mile of the original St. Michael the Archangel meeting place, a house on Jackson Love Highway in Erwin.

The damage in Erwin was extensive, Father Charters said, citing a bridge over Interstate 26 in the area.

“There’s a road that goes over the interstate to the other side, and traffic was going over there, but the interstate bridge was lost, down on the ground,” he said. “The whole industrial area was wiped out. You couldn’t get down any further beyond that. The hospital is gone, basically because the water went up to the roof. The Shell station was hit very hard, totally inundated. A little Mexican restaurant, literally the best in the area—that was totally inundated. A motel, the Mountain Inn, that was how high the water went up there. Then it went across, the force of the water across there just wiped out the industrial area. We had our parishioners who worked at a place that makes sheds (Old Hickory Buildings). Somebody there, I don’t know who it was, made a road real quick so people could get out. That’s why they didn’t lose anybody. Other businesses along there used that road, too, I understand, before the water covered it.”

The three parishioners from St. Michael the Archangel who lost their lives worked at Impact Plastics in Erwin.

“At Impact is where we lost our people,” Father Charters said. “We had three from the parish who died at Impact. There was a fourth person who died at Impact. She was a member of a little Baptist church in Johnson City, a Hispanic lady. The ladies knew her down here. A young man and his mother worked there. They went out to move their cars because the water was coming, and that’s what saved them, because they turned around and the water was inundating the building. Another one survived by holding onto a pipe for two hours as the water rushed by her. She’s one of our readers here on Saturday nights.

“We still have more people who worked there, a young fellow, at least three more.”

Father Charters said St. Michael the Archangel is not the only center for physical, spiritual, and emotional outreach as the nonprofit Care & Share center and Unicoi County High School in Erwin are doing their part, too.

As of Oct. 7, Catholic Charities was attempting to set up counseling services at St. Michael the Archangel, and the Mexican Consulate was using the parish to make appointments to help Hispanic residents.

Like St. Mary in Johnson City, St. Michael the Archangel Church’s parish center has “started blossoming out with all sorts of trucks coming in, a semi coming in, trucks from all over the place bringing everything,” Father Charters said. “People are just bringing a lot of things down. We’re jam-packed. The only place that isn’t having things in it is my office. We’ve used every spot in this building and brought in two pods, the diocese offered us two pods, and those are filling up right now. There are a lot of items, and we’re shipping them out as people need them. We had a call from Mountain City for some things.”

Officials representing U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn have helped family members of victims from Mexico obtain emergency papers so they can attend their loved ones’ funerals in Erwin, Father Charters said.

A community service in the Food City parking lot and two rosaries at the high school have helped the grieving Erwin families.

“We had a very beautiful ecumenical service, a community service, on Thursday,” Father Charters said. “It was fantastic. It was for the entire county, for anyone who wanted to come. There were a couple of hundred there. The mayor spoke, I spoke, and Ben Brewer, the elder from the First Christian Church who also oversees the Care & Share center, he and I had a prayer. We had a candlelight service, even though it was 5 in the afternoon. All six people who have been missing, four Hispanics and two Anglos, their pictures were there. We had 130 candles handed out. A cross-section of the county was there.”

The rosaries were attended by non-Catholics as well.

“We did two rosaries at the high school, which was interesting from this standpoint: the first rosary, a couple of people, one who was a Baptist and one who was a Methodist, they sat in on the first rosary and afterward said to me, ‘I just needed that.’ I don’t know what they were saying, because it was all in Spanish, but the repetition was so peaceful and calming, ‘I needed that,’” Father Charters said, adding that the second rosary “had a lot more people. They weren’t all Catholics.”

At a community service, “I saw one person there, I know very much he was not a Catholic, but he was holding his rosary during the service. He brought it with him to the Friday service. It was very visible hanging down from his hand,” Father Charters said.

The St. Michael the Archangel priest thanked Glenmary Brother Corey Soignier for his assistance in the relief effort.

“I would just uphold Brother Corey and Lorena and all the volunteers here—I’m talking about little kids,” Father Charters said. “There was one little girl they told me was carrying something out to a car that was as big as her, and she was just a little girl, 7 or 8 years old. The teenagers, the middle school kids—they’ve all jumped in. They’re out there now—whenever a truck moves in they’re out there. They’re hauling things, and the adults as well. In fact, I’m wondering how some of these adults are off work, because they must be taking some time off because this is the middle of the afternoon, and they’ve been here since noon. And it’s not because they’ve lost their job, it’s that they’re here working and helping.”

Father Kiyimba is parochial administrator of Good Shepherd Parish in Newport as well as St. Mary Parish in Gatlinburg.

“Newport was affected by the floods, especially the folks living in downtown Newport and along the river. We lost two parishioners, a husband and wife,” he said.

Those who survived the flooding have both short-term and long-term challenges, Father Kiyimba noted.

“Our people had to be evacuated or left their homes to seek shelter somewhere else. They lost houses, and many were left with nothing to live on,” he said. “They need food, water, and other basic needs. Temporary housing is still an issue. I’ve been told that those who have been paying on their own are running out of money. I’ve also been told that people are beginning to get sick from mold bacteria and toxins they’re exposed to in the flooding and cleaning. Those with chronic diseases are finding it hard to manage due to lack of medicines. Many people are so worried that it’ll be difficult to rebuild their houses, especially those without insurance.”

The help given by the Good Shepherd community has not gone unnoticed.

“I’ve been amazed by the Good Shepherd parishioners and our neighbors,” Father Kiyimba said. “They have positively responded to the call to volunteer. I feel so proud of them for the great sacrifice they have made by offering their time and money. Many arrive in the morning at the church and stay working hard up to 7 p.m.”

The Church of the Good Shepherd has served as a distribution center for assistance to flooding victims.

“We’re receiving support from Catholic Charities, from our parishioners, from people within the Newport community, and from all over the country: Iowa, Chicago, Cincinnati, and from other churches here in the Diocese of Knoxville,” Father Kiyimba said.

The Newport priest spoke of his ministry to those in need.

“As the parochial administrator, what affects my people affects me as well,” he said. “In addition to the prayers, which I offer every single day, I’ve personally been on the ground, on some days working with the volunteers. I seek updates from the parish flood coordinators, including Mr. Scott Mulligan, our parish Catholic Charities ambassador and St. Vincent de Paul president. I express my gratitude to all volunteers and continue encouraging all to participate actively.”