Beset with its own flood woes, United Way aided others
Published 6:33 pm Thursday, February 15, 2018
By Ken Stickney
With four people working in a 400-square-foot, temporary facility, Janie Johnson may not have ample room to display the Community Builders award she received Thursday.
But she’ll make room.
The executive director of the United Way of Mid & South Jefferson County was honored Thursday with the Port Arthur Cosmopolitan Mason Lodge 872’s award for distinguished service in 2018. The presentation was made at the Rotary Club of Port Arthur, an organization she previously served as president.
“This means a lot to me,” she said, accepting the award from Russel Alvin Buss, Donald Willis and Johnny Green of the Masons, “especially at Rotary.”
Plenty of challenges
Johnson listed a litany of challenges her organization has faced since Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey struck the area in August 2017.
The UW office at 7980 Anchor Drive was flooded and sustained wind damage, hitting the office high and low. Some 12-15 inches of floodwater remained in the building for days, destroying much of the office interior, records and furniture. Wind damage affected the roof and led to the demise of historical records for the organization, which is more than nine decades old.
Nonetheless, the United Way staff of three full-time and one part-time workers got right back to work, seeking to contact its more than 20 member agencies and using social media to establish a network with United Ways worldwide.
Agencies bounced back
Member agencies rebounded quickly to serve flood-affected people throughout the area, serving people who needed food, clothing, building supplies and more.
Johnson listed some examples:
- Some plant or construction workers were unable to return to work without boots, tools or work clothes. United Way through its agencies bridged some of those gaps.
- The organization stepped in to secure rent check assistance for some flood-affected people who couldn’t handle both a mortgage payment for their flooded homes and a rent check for the temporary housing they required.
- Some member agencies supplied people with pet food when they learned that some pet owners were sharing their own meals with their “furry friends.”
- Gift cards from Walmart and Lowe’s Home Improvement were distributed to needy people.
Support came from myriad directions, resulting in 150,000 pounds of supplies arriving in the area from disparate places like Washington state, from a retired NFL player in New York and from the United Way of New Orleans, which is itself still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
She said she loved the camaraderie shown in post-Harvey relief efforts, and remains proud of the creative work the organization has done and is doing.
“We’re not a Band-Aid,” she said. “We’re a solution seeker.”
