The ministry of presence matters as Erwin is recovering

Glenmary team leading efforts to unify Unicoi

By Bill Brewer

As St. Michael the Archangel Parish and the town of Erwin move forward from the devastating flood wrought by Hurricane Helene last September, Father Tom Charters is preparing for yet another emotional moment.

Next month, the pastor will give first Holy Communion to the young daughter of a woman who was swept away and died on Sept. 27 as the Nolichucky River turned from a docile mountain tributary into swollen, raging rapid that destroyed part of the town.

It’s a spiritually uplifting moment Father Charters looks forward to as the parish and its town work daily to change the narrative that has dominated Unicoi County for the past six months.

Despite the time that has elapsed and the thousands of manhours spent working to restore Erwin and its people, overwhelming sadness lingers amid constant reminders of one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit East Tennessee.

Six people in Erwin were killed when floodwaters carried them away, and of those, three were St. Michael the Archangel parishioners. A fourth parishioner died at her home from what Father Charters believes was overwhelming stress from the flood.

Piles of debris—including large bridge spans—litter the banks of the Nolichucky River along Interstate 26, and dump trucks by the dozens crowd the roads, working to return the area to its scenic state. Once-bustling buildings that served the thriving local economy and employed hundreds of workers now stand vacant and in ruin.

A vicious day

Father Charters paused downheartedly when he thought back to the early fall day that seemed picture-perfect for the season.

Looks were deceiving.

“It was really a very vicious day,” he said. “The sun had come out that day, too. It had rained for about four days before that.”

Eyewitness accounts of Sept. 27 describe floodwaters receding as fast as they rose.

“It was a massive rush of water, a wall of water, that came through here,” said Brother Corey Soignier, GHM, who assists Father Charters at St. Michael the Archangel.

Father Charters, who has served St. Michael the Archangel since its founding in 2011, believes something extraordinarily rare has occurred: Erwin has been time-stamped by the disaster that experts say wasn’t a generational flood; it was a weather event that likely won’t be repeated for many generations.

As fresh in the minds of Erwin residents as the flood is, Father Charters doesn’t believe it will ever be a distant memory for people in the parish and the community at large.

“I think what will happen in the years to come is it will be that ‘this happened before the flood’ and ‘this happened after the flood.’ ‘I was doing that before the flood.’ ‘I was doing this after the flood.’ I think it will be like a dividing line in this community for a long, long time; at least for a generation,” the St. Michael the Archangel pastor said.

“The flood was that significant. It just has left a mark on this community. It’s like a time stamp. For this community, it’s something like where you have BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, meaning in the year of our Lord). You have people even saying that,” he added.

For now, the Nolichucky River spilling over its banks and swallowing everything within reach is top of mind for most everyone in Unicoi County. That includes Father Charters and the two people he leaned on heavily in responding to the disaster: Brother Corey and Lorena Reynoso, who is director of religious education and Hispanic ministry for St. Michael the Archangel.

In fact, the parish still is engaged in disaster-relief efforts six months later. On April 4, Father Charter’s team held a clothing drive to distribute remaining clothes from disaster-relief donations. And on April 5, the team took two truckloads of baby supplies to a pregnancy help center in Mountain City whose building was flooded in the storm.

Father Charters is caught between trying to move on from the initial disaster relief to disaster recovery and reliving that awful autumn day and the harrowing days that followed.

He effortlessly gives a chronology of how the disaster unfolded for him, Brother Corey, and Mrs. Reynoso.

The wall of water created by historic amounts of Hurricane Helene rainfall in the mountains of western North Carolina and upper East Tennessee on Sept. 26 and into Sept. 27 overwhelmed the Nolichucky and Pigeon rivers, whose headwaters are in North Carolina and eventually flow into the Tennessee River. The Nolichucky runs through Erwin to Douglas Lake, and the Pigeon runs through Newport to Douglas Lake.

The rapidly and aggressively rising Nolichucky swamped Unicoi County’s new hospital, prompting emergency evacuations. Patients and employees who couldn’t make it out by vehicle had to be airlifted from the hospital roof.

Not far from the hospital, an industrial park filled with businesses was underwater with little to no warning.

Father Charters, Brother Corey, and Mrs. Reynoso vividly recall Friday, Sept. 27, as a pleasant, ordinary day, unaware of what was unfolding just a short distance from the church.

“It started like any normal Friday. … We weren’t watching the news, but through our family WhatsApp we started getting messages,” Mrs. Reynoso recalled.

“How we first found out was my nephew was working at the hospital, and my sister-in-law sent a message saying, ‘Hey, have you seen the news? This part of Erwin is getting flooded. He’s at the hospital and they’re on the roof waiting to be evacuated. Could you all please say a prayer for him and everybody there?’ We started checking and we saw other people we knew posting (online) messages. One said, ‘Please pray for my mom; she’s stuck. They couldn’t evacuate on time.’ We started hearing from another person saying they couldn’t find so many people,” she added.

Mrs. Reynoso called Father Charters and asked him to lead adoration and prayers for people who were missing in the flood. After late-afternoon adoration, Father Charters accompanied her to Unicoi County High School in Erwin, which had become an impromptu community disaster-response center, to see if any parishioners were there and to see if there was anything they could do.

“When we got to the high school, that is when it really hit. It was heartbreaking. Everyone was just trying to grasp onto the smallest hope. I can’t imagine what the families were going through,” Mrs. Reynoso said, noting that some of the people who made it to the high school had been rescued from the river while others were family members who were searching for missing loved ones.

Later Friday night, Mrs. Reynoso went to comfort a family she knew personally whose daughter was missing.

The next day, on Saturday, Sept. 28, St. Michael the Archangel’s role in the community began to change dramatically.

Father Charters said for four to six weeks, St. Michael the Archangel closed down for everything except Mass and disaster-relief operations.

“Our religious-education building became a center for clothes, food, and other assistance,” he noted.

Trucks of all sizes and from all over were delivering donated supplies to the church. According to Father Charters, Brother Corey, and Mrs. Reynoso, parishioners generously volunteered to unload the trucks and move supplies, which went on for weeks.

“On Saturday, Sept. 28, God just put everything into motion,” Mrs. Reynoso recalled.

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, St. Michael the Archangel had become an official hub in the county for donation collections and distribution.

Father Charters and Mrs. Reynoso credit Brother Corey for organizing St. Michael’s disaster-relief effort.

“God put Brother Corey here. He coordinated everything along with my sister, Carmen. That’s how we got started providing help for people who needed it,” Mrs. Reynoso said. “We had so much help from our parishioners. On that Monday, big loads of donations began arriving.”

Parish youth volunteered their time for days because school was out for six weeks.

“We had a lot of help. I am very blessed with a big family, and they are very helpful. Anytime I asked them for help, my nieces and nephews, sisters, and brothers would show up and help unload the trucks. We had a lot of support. Everyone was so willing to help,” Mrs. Reynoso shared.

The tragic loss of life cast a pall over disaster relief as the help efforts ramped up throughout Erwin.

Relief comes in many forms

Father Charters was called on to offer another kind of relief.

“I had three funerals in eight days. The last body to be found was a month after the flood. We had her funeral on Nov. 30. That was the last one,” Father Charters said. “I’ve had funerals for people who aren’t Catholic. The funeral home called and asked if I could come and do a funeral. This is very common in our Glenmary missions.”

It has been widely reported that those who drowned were clinging to a semi-trailer in the industrial park awaiting rescue when the trailer tipped over, spilling them into the fast-moving rapids.

As the entire county of Unicoi was thrust into the stages of grief, Father Charters knew he was needed to help shepherd residents—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—through anger and depression toward acceptance and hope.

Father Charters was joined by Protestant pastors in ministering to the community. And other Erwin churches also became relief centers as did Unicoi County Care & Share, a local public-assistance organization.

He believes it is divine mercy that St. Michael the Archangel and the Diocese of Knoxville are in Erwin and able to be an important resource to alleviate suffering.

“The question that might be asked is what if the Catholic Church was not here at all? Fifteen years ago, it wasn’t. If this had happened 15 years ago, the Catholic Church would not have been here,” the Glenmary priest said. “That is what I think speaks strongly for the Catholic presence. People know the Catholic Church is here, and they know they care. And they know they care for people whether they are Catholic or not.”

That’s why he believes it is so important that Glenmary is in Unicoi County, to establish the parish community and pull people together.

“It’s an evangelization aspect. It’s a social-ministry aspect. It’s saying we care, the Church cares. The parish has always been strong. It has always been a strong parish. It is a welcoming parish. We have a lot of new families here. We have so many people here now. For me, it’s like being in a cathedral. It really is,” he continued.

St. Michael the Archangel has shifted gears in recent weeks and has been doing more disaster recovery, assisting people in getting their homes rebuilt. Unused disaster-relief goods at St. Michael are being sent to other centers that need them.

“We’ve been sending things to Mountain City (St. Anthony of Padua Parish) to Father Jesús (Guerrero) and to Elizabethton (St. Elizabeth Parish). This is a good sign. We contacted Deacon David (Duhamel) at Catholic Charities, and they came and picked up things to take to Kentucky because they were flooded,” Father Charters said.

“The needs go down. It’s not that the needs aren’t here. People aren’t knocking on the doors because they’ve been able to touch base with other organizations,” he noted.

He said meetings are ongoing in Erwin with all the government offices, nonprofit organizations, and churches that assist the public to discuss how to continue to help people in the community.

“The recovery will go on. It’s the smaller things you’re hearing about now. The wave is over with,” he observed.

Father Charters and Mrs. Reynoso agree that a silver lining from the disaster has been the people in the Erwin community who have been working together to remedy the disastrous effects of the flooding.

“A community meeting we recently had was to plan in case something else were to happen in the future. We now have a plan. There was no plan before that. That is gratifying and very healthy,” Father Charters shared.

The Glenmary Home Missioners pastor said it is common for Glenmary priests to encounter crises of one kind or another in their mission work. It goes with the ministry.

But the size and scale of the flooding last fall was unusual, even for a Glenmary.

Unintended consequences

And there are lasting impacts in the community, not the least of which are the physical and mental wellbeing of people.

“People who have been through it are dealing with ramifications. We are still providing funds for mental-health counseling,” Father Charters said, noting that people were physically injured in the disaster who have delayed getting treatment out of deference to others in need.

Father Charters, Brother Corey, and Mrs. Reynoso believe it’s imperative for everyone to have access to health care, and they are making sure those they come in contact with do. But they also are inspired by the sense of community that has emerged in Unicoi County.

“This flood was unexpected. It was a big tragedy for the community, but it also helped to unite us as a community. And when I say unite, I’m talking about everybody, regardless of your skin color, regardless of what language you speak. It just gave us a sense of community,” Mrs. Reynoso said.

“Also, you see God’s mercy in all of this, and you see people’s compassion in wanting to help. People gave monetary donations, and that was great. But people also gave their time and their service to help everyone who was in need. That was beautiful to see. Everyone joined together to help,” she continued.

During the early days of the disaster, Mrs. Reynoso was inspired by daily prayer that was led in the high school auditorium. And residents of the county, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, joined in the rosaries that were prayed.

“You know, we get very comfortable with life. Sometimes we forget what Jesus calls us to do. But it was so eye-opening and beautiful to see how we all have that within us when it really matters. It came out. You could see it in people. That was beautiful,” she said.

As autumn pivoted to winter and disaster relief continued, there was concern how the impacted residents would get through the Christmas holiday and the cold months.

For the volunteers, that meant the job was ongoing, and the urgency of making sure people were sheltered, warm, and fed was palpable.

The disaster-relief supply chain also was a concern as everything tends to slow down during the holidays.

“The first two weeks of winter, it was tough. We were trying to get things in, and they didn’t come in when we had it planned,” Brother Corey said. “For the winter months, yes, it wasn’t too bad for the parish. But for the wider community, the first two weeks of winter were tough. Once the heaters and propane tanks came in, we were able to get those out into the community and into the mountains. And then as supplies began to come in, it was smooth sailing because we had it figured out.”

As Erwin entered the new year, a new phase for the county was apparent.

“We were at phase two of the recovery. We were beyond getting food and supplies to people immediately. We were now determining how to help people rebuild and recover and get some sense of dignity returned to their lives,” Brother Corey said. “Among the supplies distributed during the winter months in addition to propane were blankets, jackets, food, cleaning supplies, and home appliances like microwaves.”

And there were multiple trips to retail stores to purchase additional supplies for those in need.

Father Charters and Brother Corey credited Catholic Charities of East Tennessee and its director, Deacon Duhamel, for assisting St. Michael the Archangel in the relief effort, as well as Bishop Mark Beckman and donors to Glenmary Home Missioners.

Brother Corey described how Bishop Beckman met with Bishop Brian L. Cole of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee as disaster relief was underway. Brother Corey said Bishop Cole told Bishop Beckman that he had no Episcopal parish that was affected by flooding, but he wanted to help in some way.

“He (Bishop Cole) reached out to us three times, and he was able to donate to help us financially to bring in support for the people here. Funds have come from everyone everywhere, so many different locations,” Brother Corey said.

Monetary funds, like all the donations of goods, services, time, and talent, have been as vital to the second phase of recovery as in the first phase of disaster relief.

A new normal

Many are wondering what Unicoi County and Erwin will look like after phase two.

“In talking with other organizations in the relief effort, we don’t talk about what was normal. We talk about what is the new normal,” Brother Corey said.

“There was so much that was impacted, so much that was changed in the county. We can never be back to 100 percent normal before the flood. We’ve had to come up with a new normal. What does a new normal look like today? There was such a significant impact, such significant damage done to different areas,” he added.

That also has implications for St. Michael the Archangel as it tries to return to normal, whatever that might be.

Father Charters said parish religious education and first Communion preparation, which had to be altered when the religious-education space had to be converted to disaster-relief space, must get back to normal.

“We still struggle to find teaching space. They are still teaching around boxes. It’s a new normal, and we’re adapting,” he said.

Father Charters laments how the Hispanic community was especially hard hit, but it is trying to recover. However, lingering aftereffects of the flood continue to devastate this community, which is vital to St. Michael the Archangel and the larger upper East Tennessee region.

The stories of loss and survival are heartrending.

“I see them recovering. I can think of one person who, I will be honest with you, really went through hell. She was in the water for two hours. One of the workers held on to her for two hours as the water was rushing by. She was ready to give up. Her fellow workers were telling her to hang in there,” Father Charters said. “I have since gotten her to be involved in Mass, to read. I did that right away, a couple of Sundays after this happened. I just wanted to try to get her back into something normal in the parish.”

He shared another story of a parishioner and her son who were at work as the flooding began. The son told his mother they needed to move their car as the water was rising.

“They moved their car, but by the time they turned around, as I understand, they couldn’t get back in (to work). That’s what saved their lives, otherwise they would have been wiped out, too,” Father Charters said.

The spiritual and personal recovery of residents is just as important as reopening roads and businesses, Brother Corey believes, and he is working with Father Charters to keep making that happen.

Brother Corey is seeing positive signs of recovery as he continues to go out into the community, representing the parish.

“There are expectations for the plants that were destroyed in the flood. All of them are willing and wanting to rebuild here in Erwin. So, that gives a sense of hope of people being able to get back to their jobs,” he said.

Father Charters added that some people immediately found other places to work when the flood rendered them jobless, but in some cases that meant leaving the area for work and returning home on the weekends.

St. Michael the Archangel has a strong Spanish-speaking congregation, with upward of 90 percent of members being Hispanic, while 10 percent are Anglo. Father Charters said except for one family, the Anglo community is retirees. And of the Anglos, only one family has children who are in school.

The aftermath

Mrs. Reynoso continues to mourn the death of a close relative who died in the flood. There are many who, like her, are grieving.

But as Erwin mourns the deaths of its residents, it is trying to get on with the life of the community, its survivors, its homes, its businesses, its churches.

Mrs. Reynoso is hopeful for the future—immediate and long-term—because of the resiliency of the people of Unicoi County and their willingness to help each other.

“God knew this was going to be tough, and He just put the right people in the right place,” she said. “You know, if we still need to provide support, then we will provide support. We will continue until our supplies run out and there are no more left. We were thinking we would be finished in January, then February, then March, and now April.”

Brother Corey had only been at St. Michael the Archangel for a month when the flood hit. He joined the Erwin parish from Hartsville, Tenn., where he had served for a year.

“I was just learning the area, just getting to know the area, and all of a sudden I got a crash course on what the area is,” he shared.

He said the flood has had a profound impact on his vocation.

“This really opened my heart and my eyes to what it means to serve the entire county of Unicoi and not just Erwin, Tenn., or St. Michael the Archangel. It has helped me understand that calling as Glenmarys, the calling that everyone in this county is our parishioners, as Father Charters said. It helped me really see that,” the Glenmary Brother pointed out.

In the early days of the disaster that also seriously affected Mountain City, Newport, and Greene County, Bishop Beckman, who visited upper East Tennessee, referred to the importance of the ministry of presence in the impacted areas, whether by priests, religious, parishioners, or Catholic Charities of East Tennessee.

And for Father Charters, the comprehensive response that has occurred since Sept. 27 can be summed up in one word: ministry, which was encountered each day and in many ways.

“For me, the ministry was a ministry of presence. Walking with my collar on through the community. I think that spoke loudly,” he said.

Father Charters is very grateful for Brother Corey’s service during and since the flood, saying he was invaluable in doing all that the parish was called to do.

“Brother Corey’s presence has been a tremendous blessing to this parish, and he is a good model of what it is to be a religious Brother.”

Father Charters describes Mrs. Reynoso in the same way.

“It was a blending of different personalities, different ministries. Different gifts and talents made all this possible,” the priest said. “I was able to use the gifts God gave me, and they blended well with the gifts Corey has and with the gifts Lorena has. All three of us have been a good team.”

Mrs. Reynoso expresses similar sentiments about Father Charters and Brother Corey. She also thanked her family and her husband for their support during the monthslong crisis.

“God puts the people in your life when you need them,” she said, speaking of her immediate family, her St. Michael the Archangel family, and her Erwin-Unicoi County family.