The texts and calls started early Sunday morning.
Members of the Oglethorpe County Board of Education and Superintendent Beverley Levine wondered how they could help folks from around the area who needed food, showers and other necessities in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
The brainstorm led to bringing in school staff, gathering donations and toiletries, and opening Oglethorpe County High School’s gym that afternoon to provide meals, showers, power and supplies for people from Oglethorpe and other counties.
“It was all hands on deck,” BOE Chair Becky Soto said. “It was a good day after some not so great days.”
Oglethorpe County was spared from the severe damage that hit many counties, including Wilkes, Lincoln, McDuffie and others in the Augusta area when Helene took a more easterly path than predicted.
Folks from those areas drove to Oglethorpe searching for supplies, hot meals, gas and anywhere with electricity.
School board members and school officials made signs and stood along Highway 78, in front of the OCHS gym. Those who stopped received spaghetti meals, bottled water and other necessities. Some took food to people affected by the damage and power outages.
Ace Hardware in Crawford brought in 179 generators from the Ace Hardware warehouse in Jefferson between Friday night and Sunday, and vice president/general manager Jeff Strickland and manager Chuck Gabriel called in family members to help man the store.
Trey Gabriel, a sixth-grader at Oglethorpe County Middle School, set up a desk and took the names of numbers of people who were waiting for generators they had purchased.
“We took our trucks and trailers and anything we could find” to pick up the generators and bring them to the store, Strickland said.
The store was supposed to close at 4 p.m. Saturday, but Strickland said they didn’t leave until almost 8 p.m. They also staffed the store from 1-6 p.m. Sunday, a day when Ace is usually closed.
Gabriel said people said their home counties were “unrecognizable” and many were headed up Highway 78 to Athens when they stopped at the Ace in Crawford.
“It was more than just a hardware store that’s open from 7:30 to 4 on Saturdays,” Strickland said. “We were going to stay here until the last person was served or we run out. And running out wasn’t necessarily an option because we constantly were working the computer to get more inventory and put people on the road to go get it.”