Long after the television crews have packed up and moved on to other stories, the newspaper reporters have returned to their offices, federal relief workers have gone on to the next disaster and the swarms of volunteers who initially came to help have returned home, Mary Goodnite is still out in the field helping the victims of tornadoes that devastated this area.
“It takes a special person to hang in there,” said Christine Kirkely, director of Operation Blessing in Alabama and head of Helpline Christian Outreach in Birmingham. “A lot of people are out there for the first week when the hype and media are out there and everybody is focusing on what you’re doing. It really tells the story when you stay out there after everybody’s gone, like she has.”
As with most disasters, the initial relief efforts attract the nation’s attention. It is through the mostly unrecognized long-term efforts of people like Mary Goodnite, however, that disaster victims start putting their shattered lives back together.
Unlike many volunteers who assisted in the first days and weeks after the April 8 twisters and then moved on, Goodnite has remained committed to helping residents, most of them low-income and most of whom had no insurance. She has become a lifeline for many of them, being there to listen to their problems, helping them to find the proper agencies for assistance and bringing them bags of food, cleaning supplies and personal items donated by relief organizations.
The tornadoes that ripped through the area left 34 people dead and destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes.
Goodnite said she has empathy with the victims because she lost everything she owned a year ago on Easter Sunday when a fire destroyed the apartment where she and her 16-year-old daughter lived.
“There wasn’t anything salvageable,” Goodnite said. “We got no help from anyone. We were lost in the system. We literally did without furniture for six or seven months. My daughter and I basically went through that alone, and that has played a role in my jumping out there and helping these people.
“I know what it’s like to lose everything. I just don’t want these people going through it alone or having to eat on paper plates for four months because they don’t have money for dishes or having to drink instant coffee because they don’t have a coffee pot or just not having the basic necessities.”
Goodnite, 37, didn’t set out to be a volunteer. Laid off from her job in a department store since January when the company closed and still upset about the fire that destroyed her apartment, Goodnite had been struggling to get her life back on track.
“In a way the tornado saved me,” Goodnite said. “It got me moving again. It got me motivated to get up in the morning. . . . It got me excited about life. It actually saved my life. I hate to say it, but the tornado in a way has been a real blessing.”
The day after the tornadoes struck, Goodnite awoke in the early morning with a resolve to help others.
Her desire really wasn’t anything new. Before deciding to take a job and move to Alabama from Jacksonville, N.C., she had worked in a prison counseling inmates. She also was instrumental in setting up a women’s shelter and a homeless shelter in Jacksonville.
Goodnite put her volunteerism on hold when she arrived in Birmingham about three years ago as she coped with a new job, raising her daughter, Mary, as she had since a divorce 15 years earlier, and making a life for them both in a new city. She devoted much of her energy to what she calls the “motherly thing,” which included cheering her daughter’s soccer team and attending various school functions.
Despite all that, she still felt that something was missing from her life, although “I didn’t know what it was.”
When the tornadoes struck rural western Jefferson County, Goodnite was transfixed by the images of destruction and grief she saw on her television set that night.
“The next morning at 5 o’clock I was up and dressed, not knowing what I was going to do,” she recalled. “I just had this feeling inside that I needed to go out and help.”
She has been out there every day since.
Goodnite initially helped clear debris from stricken areas but quickly realized that she needed to be doing more. So she began delivering food from the Salvation Army to residents, sometimes using a wagon because roads were impassible. As people got to know and trust her, they often said, “Here come’s the Salvation Lady,” a nickname that stuck to this day.
In the first weeks and months after the storm, she was often out in the field at dawn and wouldn’t arrive home until midnight. She has been helping about 150 families.
“I just felt like I couldn’t leave these people,” she said. “They’re living out there 24 hours a day. We get to go home to a hot bath or a nice shower. We get to put our feet up and watch TV. They don’t have that luxury.”
Her efforts have been appreciated by those she has helped.
“I don’t know what we would have done without her,” said Patty Taylor, whose small home was heavily damaged in the storm. “We’d probably still be struggling.”
When four cows escaped from Mattie Witman’s fenced yard, Goodnite and two companions were there to help the 88-year-old woman, whose walking cane was blown away by the twister.
“She could hardly walk to start with, but she was out there with this stick trying to get the cows,” Goodnite said. “It would take her three minutes to take four steps. We stopped what we were doing and handled the cow situation. It took us an hour to do it, but we got the cows back in there and the fence taken care of. The next day we bought her a cane.
“Nobody’s ever going to believe what we had to do out there with the cows,” she said. “It was a good stress-breaker because we laughed about it later.”
When Lutheran Disaster Response offered Goodnite a job as a caseworker in May, she initially was hesitant. She was concerned about accepting money for her efforts. Until then, she had been working strictly as a volunteer, living on unemployment and some money from an insurance settlement from the apartment fire.
“I called a local pastor and asked if it was right for me to accept money from a church to go out and help people,” she recalled. “He said, `People do it every day. Pastors get paid for it.’ I never looked at it that way. It took me a couple of days to feel comfortable about accepting money from a church.”
One of the elements of her effectiveness is her refusal to let people in need get caught up in the bureaucracy or the politics of an organization.
Although working for one relief agency, Goodnite uses the services of other organizations if she thinks they can help.
“Whoever’s got the help the family needs is pretty much who I go to,” she said.
When one agency rejected a request for $340 for an air-conditioner for a couple sweltering while living temporarily in a trailer, she went to another agency and got the needed funds.
Even more frustrating, she said, were the days right after the tornadoes hit, when storm victims were having to cope with paperwork before they could receive food. Seeing that some families were hungry and in need, Goodnite and several other volunteers worked around the system to make sure the families were fed.
“I would have to go in the back door of these organizations,” she said. “Every building has a back door.”
Goodnite is put off by what she says is the politics, bureaucracy and petty jealousies of some relief agencies. She also has seen storm victims trying to take advantage of the system.
None of that, however, has dampened her zeal to help.
Yet she can’t really explain what is driving her.
“I don’t know why I do it,” she said. “I just know it’s something inside of me that keeps me going. It’s almost like I’ve found my calling in life. There’s no logical explanation.
“When I see these families smile, I remember what it was like to laugh the very first time after my house burned down,” she said. “When I see them smile, I know that the family will be able to start living again.”
