Southeast Tennessee Volunteer Spotlight: Pete Galanos - December 2017

The Southeast Tennessee Red Cross counts on Pete Galanos.

Last year, Brooke Powell, Southeast Tennessee’s Red Cross Disaster Program Specialist, discovered that volunteer Pete Galanos, a 71-year-old retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 4, was a military logistics specialist. So, she showed him her shelter facility file drawer. “It looked like somebody had taken a fistful of papers and shoved them inside,” Powell said. “When Pete saw it, his head exploded.”

Galanos, a retired pharmacist and East Brainerd resident, is this month's Southeast Tennessee Red Cross Volunteer Spotlight. “He is a very serious and hard-working volunteer that we love working with at the EOC in Meigs County,” one nominator wrote. “We had the expert with us.”

This year, Galanos worked tirelessly to turn a jumble of papers into a tidy regiment of color-coded folders. He created an easy-to-use spreadsheet, and updated Southeast Tennessee’s information with the National Shelter Service.

“I love a challenge,” Galanos said. “The harder the better.”

Galanos and his team spent many hours calling or visiting all 60-65 Southeast Tennessee Red Cross shelters, filling out 8-page inspection forms, updating contract and contact information, insuring ADA compliance, measuring square footage, and, along the way, discovering closed-down churches and large, new gymnasiums.

“He’s a workhorse,” Powell said. “And he’s an awesome person, and a real joy. I can always count on him.”

This summer, he also tallied residents, demographics and special needs for twice-daily calls to dozens of shelters during the recent Hurricane Irma operation. Such information is vital to efficient Red Cross operations, he explained. “You need to know if you have lots of children; if you have lots of infants, you can’t feed them fried chicken, right?”

During Vietnam, Galanos flew helicopter gunships. He was a military flight instructor, then a pharmacist. He and his wife moved to Chattanooga three years ago to hike, bike, sail and enjoy the outdoors.

The commitment he learned while serving in the military led him to spend many hours indoors, sorting files, filling out paperwork, drafting spreadsheets.

Galanos added that his philosophy of volunteering also grew from his military experience. “I say you’re a volunteer until you volunteer to do something,” he said. “Once you volunteer, you don’t have a choice; it means you’re going to do it. Because a lot of people and their lives, and their welfare, depend on you doing a good job.”