Letter from Mid-West Tennessee Executive Director, David Hicks - December 2019

Happy Holidays, Mid-West Tennessee chapter. By the time you will be reading this message from me, we’ll be just a few days removed from Thanksgiving and into the December holiday season. I hope this article finds you well and things are good with each of you and your respective families.

In October and November, we finished up our two and a half week disaster response as a chapter to the damage created in our southern counties of Decatur, Hardin, and McNairy, due to the high winds that gusted as high as 80 to 100 mph, and all the residual effects of it. As I’m comprising this article the Disaster Recovery caseworkers are still connecting with impacted families in our efforts to provide financial assistance to the qualifying homes that either had structural damage or were destroyed. I’m proud to say that our volunteer leadership led by example throughout the response as I assumed they would and proved invaluable in the implementation of our services. I am especially impressed as this was in the absence of a staff Disaster Program Manager.

As we enter the other side of this DR, I’m confident in saying that we stepped up as a chapter, and not only represented our local chapter with excellence, but we also proved to be good hosts to all of the additional Tennessee chapter teams that came alongside us to offer their help and support. Thank you to all those people from Chattanooga, Kingsport, Murfreesboro, and Nashville. Kudos to each of those teams and their willingness to drop everything in their respective chapters and come to our aid. That was truly a gesture of one Red Cross.

We have much to be thankful for as we enter the holiday season. I look forward with great anticipation to what the next few months hold for us in our chapter and Red Cross family. We are eager for the hiring of a new DPM staffer, our upcoming holiday party, participating in Christmas parades and holiday gatherings, growing our first ever American Red Cross Club at USJ high school in Jackson, hosting our third annual Sound the Alarm event in April, recruitment of new volunteers to build our chapter and extend our community outreach and impact even more. Let’s all look forward to it with great anticipation and do what each of us can to make our chapter stronger for our Red Cross family.

Again, thank you all and Happy Holidays!