Today marked a monumental day as Operation Blessing and The Home Depot embarked on their first ever disaster relief partnership. More than 125 Home Depot associates from 28 stores within Missouri and Illinois arrived at the Operation Blessing Mobile Command Center in Winfield, Missouri, to help clean up the devastation left behind by the floods.

The day started off with a briefing from Operation Blessing staff and The Home Depot’s District Manager, Steven Esparza, who initiated the partnership. He challenged them that today is not a day of sales, it is all about doing the right thing and truly caring for their customers and communities in a tangible way.

Steven then presented Operation Blessing with a generous Home Depot gift card of $5,000.

At 8:30 a.m., we deployed this army of volunteers throughout the community. We saw the residents’ countenances change as they watched the skilled Home Depot volunteers complete work in a matter of hours that otherwise would have taken the residents weeks and months to do.

As I drove through the community checking on homes, I met residents such as 63-year-old Newton of Winfield, Missouri, who had no idea how he was going to get his home cleaned up. Newton was struggling financially and also disabled with only one leg. He hobbled through the house with excitement on his crutches, giving directions to all the volunteers like a true foreman. As I walked inside his home, the walls had been gutted down to the studs, approximately 4 ft. from the floor and the only thing hanging on the wall was a picture of a saint bent over praying. It was a powerful moment as I realized everything was stripped away from this gentleman and what was left was his faith and hope for a brighter future.

Another lady named Schirley, age 78, lived down by the Mississippi River and her eyes teared up as she told me her story. She did not have much money in retirement, much less an inheritance to leave her children, but she wanted to give her family something that would last for generations and be able to experience with them while she was still living. Two years ago, Schirley took $20,000 of her retirement and bought a home on the river for her family to enjoy. They had been remodeling the week before the storms and were scheduled to put the final touches on the kitchen cabinets the very week the Mississippi crested and ravaged her prized and precious possession – her family’s inheritance.

Schirley told me how she showed up to begin working alone on her home and, to her surprise, there was a team of 10 Operation Blessing and Home Depot volunteers ready to help her. ”What they did in 2 hours would have taken me months,” she said.

At the end of an incredible day, the Home Depot’s Steven Esparza summed it best when he wrote,
“Hey guys, just sitting with my three kids resting, but the e-mails will not stop coming in from our teams wanting to do more. We can accomplish a lot when our orange blood gets pumping. Thank you so much, I am very impressed with your team!”

Together, Operation Blessing and The Home Depot completed work on 22 properties and coordinated more than 129 volunteers in only seven hours!!!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Disaster, Jody Herrington, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.