This summer I spent two hot weeks in August in Alabama, trying to help some of the people who were hit by about 120 tornadoes this spring.
While there, I met Angela Pate, a remarkable volunteer. She set her law practice aside to help her neighbours, starting right after the first storm by helping her husband cut away trees blocking the highway, then the next morning by deciding the hungry, distraught people she saw gathered on a knoll needed food, clothing and shelter.
The storm wiped out electricity which meant nobody was willing to risk driving anywhere because gas station pumps were not working. Nor were restaurants open.
So she gathered wieners from her freezer and headed for the downtown. She needed a large barbecue and spotted one in a yard.The owner, a black man, agreed she could use it and then he volunteered to help her.
The result was a first for that community, a black person working beside a white woman to serve hot dogs.
From that grew an organized response to the disaster, all spearheaded by this remarkable Angela Pate.
She persuaded seven owners of vacant homes to provide them rent-free for a year in return for having volunteers repair them. She calls that project Flipping for Families, which is on the T-shirt she's holding.
She persuaded a church to open its facilities to become command centre and a kitchen and dining room for local victims and for volunteers coming into the community.
Angela told me the storm, bad as it was, has brought healing and hope to the community. Everybody is now pulling together, including two Baptist churches that been divided, one for relatively wealthy and well-educated residents on the top of the hill, the other for "common folk" at the bottom of the hill.
It was, ironically, the one at the bottom of the hill that immediately opened its doors to Angela Pate, no questions asked, no demands made. The other church, her church on the hill, hesitated because it wanted a meeting of its council to decide and Angela wasn't waiting. It has since become an enthusiastic partner, providing money and volunteers, including its youth group.
She envisions a rejuvenated community that will have a new downtown to complement its high-reputation high school and medical clinic. The local expressway was extended two years ago and now is five minutes from Cardova, so she thinks many commuters will come to enjoy affordable housing in a community-minded rural setting.
Angela Pate impressed me. So do many other community-minded people I have had the good fortune to meet.
