Heart of Tennessee Volunteer Spotlight, Roy Boyd - November 2017

Roy Boyd has volunteered with the Heart of Tennessee Chapter of the American Red Cross for close to 25 years.  He has served on our disaster action teams (DAT), providing comfort and assistance to our neighbors that are victims of home fires or other disaster.  He joined the board of directors in 2000, and has been an active member of the board to date. Roy’s involvement began with his job at State Farm Insurance.  State Farm and the Red Cross have been solid partners for many years; this partnership, combined with Roy’s desire to serve his community, is an excellent example of the intersection between work and community service.

Roy has served this chapter through a number of monumental national disasters.  With each of these events, starting with 9/11, monetary donations, individuals desiring to volunteer, and the demand to donate blood were overwhelming as our community wanted to help in any way possible. Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005; 400-500 evacuees came from New Orleans and were sheltered at the Smyrna Air Base.  Again in 2008 Hurricane Gustave brought more evacuees, with 457 sheltered at MTSU.  Roy was a critical part of our team responding to many events, large and small during his tenure with the chapter.

As part of the State Farm Administrative Services Primary Catastrophe Team, Roy has crossed paths with a number of our chapter’s volunteers across the country in many disasters, including tornadoes in Oklahoma City, Memphis & Jackson TN, most major hurricanes starting with Hurricane Andrew (1992) through Hurricane Sandy (2012), plus the Good Friday tornado that hit Murfreesboro in 2009.
In addition, Roy’s work at State Farm has given him the opportunity to coordinate State Farm volunteers to assist with local Red Cross volunteer opportunities.  Roy has worked to coordinate State Farm volunteers to assist in shelter operations, move-in/maintenance on our prior facility, and renovation/move-in of our current facility.  State Farm provided major funding to assist with the opening of both of these facilities. Our current Disaster Operations Center is named in honor of State Farm.

State Farm Foundations provides grants based on annual volunteer hours their employees provide to non-profits plus State Farm matches personal financial donations their employees/retirees make to qualified non-profits.

This year, Roy was recognized with the Clara Barton Honor Award which is the highest award the American Red Cross bestows on volunteers. It recognizes meritorious service in volunteer leadership positions held over a period of years. The Heart of Tennessee Chapter of the American Red Cross would like to thank Roy Boyd and State Farm for their partnership, support, and generosity through the years.