Letter from Southeast Tennessee Executive Director, Julia Wright - December 2017

2017 is truly a monumental twenty-first century page in American Red Cross history. As the Red Cross of Southeast Tennessee takes its collective breath to reflect on the accomplishments through the work of its volunteers, we close on a year in the happiness of renewal, lives changed and lives saved, while we are sorrowed by lives torn and lives lost.

Our April brought much happiness in the Military Kids Serve Too campaign. In June, we celebrated one hundred years of service in Southeast Tennessee. August saw a major impact success on our chapter in our first association with the Transmission Employee Charity Golf Tournament.

Wildfire was already scorching the Los Angeles highlands when the calm of the Atlantic hurricane season subsided and in with rage came Harvey, Irma and Maria. We opened a shelter for evacuees of Irma and almost simultaneously in-processed over 150 new prospective volunteers while deploying over 50 volunteers to help our neighbors in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, California and Puerto Rico.

In October, we honored our local heroes at the Annual Heroes Luncheon. Over the course of 2017, the Southeast Tennessee Chapter has responded to over 200 home and apartment fire and provided over 1,000 services to our military members and their families. Over 23,000 volunteer hours have been provided to the community in training and life saving skills such as first aid and CPR in the last twelve months.

2017 was an especially challenging year for all of us everywhere in the Red Cross. Fires, earthquakes, floods, storms: all in such a short span of time. This is when human beings are at their best. Always, it is our honor to be there.