4 AM, A Toothbrush, & Five Friendly Faces
By: Rebecca Nicodemus
This week has been a crazy week for me. I have said that before in my life, but this time I really mean it. At 4 am Sunday morning last week, I woke up to the sound of a smoke detector going off in my attic bedroom in the off-campus house on Fourth Street that I share with four other girls. Less than ten minutes later, we stood on the other side of our street in pajamas and slippers, with 10 degree wind whipping around us, watching flames shoot out of every window of the second story of our neighbor’s half of the house. We stood there with a million thoughts going though our heads: Would the firemen get our neighbor’s loveable black lab out of the house in time? Were flames going to be shooting out of our bedroom windows any minute? What was going to happen to everything we own? Where would we sleep that night and would we have any clothes to put on that day? And, how could this possibly be happening in the house where we had all, just that day, spent the afternoon eating chili with friends after a hike, and then playing Scrabble and watching a movie?
At 6:30 am, I found myself still clad in my flannel pajamas and blue fuzzy slippers sitting with my housemates in a hotel lobby talking to five wonderful people from the Red Cross. They sat down with each of us for a few minutes and, next thing we knew, we each had little bags with toothbrushes and shampoo and soap in one hand, and a voucher in the other for food and clothing.
Every time there is a big disaster like Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Southeast Asia, I read about the Red Cross being there. Sometime in elementary school, I think I wrote a report on Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. I always thought something along the lines of “Oh, the Red Cross, they help people when there’s a big flood or something.” Sitting in the hotel lobby, though, still not knowing if what I had on my back at that moment was all the material possessions I had left, the Red Cross became five friendly faces who gave my housemates and I a few small comforts like a toothbrush and toothpaste and soap that I have taken for granted almost every other morning of my life. Never was I more grateful for such simple things!
It turns out that our neighbor’s dog and cats did not get rescued in time, and his house, with so much of the art that was his life, was completely destroyed. Two of us lost almost all of our clothes because the fire caught into the roof above our attic closet. The rest of us have extensive smoke, soot, and water damage to our things. The next day, my bedroom had a gaping hole in the roof and was covered in broken glass and burnt timbers, while literally everything in the house was blackened with soot, soaked in dirty water, and reeked of smoke.
Somewhere in the whirlwind of things I had to do in the next few days, an email reminded me that I was supposed to write an article for the Patriot this month. I thought there would be no better way I could make use of my chance to write something a few other eyes would read than to remind people what a wonderful organization the Red Cross is. Many others, including Lehigh University, have been unbelievably helpful to us, and I realize that most people who lose their house and belongings in a fire do not have nearly the support that we have had from our friends, churches, and the University. As blessed as we have been with all this help, I will not forget that the Red Cross were the very first there to help us and that they had the things we needed right at that moment, along with the assurance that we would have clothes, food, and somewhere to stay in the next few days. How much more must those who are less fortunate place value on what the Red Cross provides?
I have already taken up most of my space for this article telling part of our little story, and I almost erased some of it to make more room for facts about the Red Cross. On second thought, though, I left it in hopes that telling a personal story makes what the Red Cross does, even on as small and common a scale as a house fire (according to the Red Cross website, there are 150 families every day that the Red Cross helps out after a house fire), more real and personal than mere statistics about it could do. Since I have hopefully stirred your curiosity about the Red Cross a little now, I will give you a few facts about their history and other things that they do in order to inform you of who they are and what you might be able to do to help them.
The Red Cross was started in America by Clara Barton in the early 1880s. She had been a nurse on the front lines of a few wars fought in Europe and had seen the drastic need for trained ‘first-responders’ to deal with wounded soldiers right on the front lines. She also saw the work of the Swiss Red Cross and came back to the U.S. to campaign in Washington D.C. for an American branch. She succeeded, and led it for more than two decades. The organization grew tremendously during WWI and the tragic influenza epidemic of those years; and then again during WWII. Since then, they have become an integral provider of “blood services”, as well as tissue banking, various health and safety training programs, and extensive support for victims of disaster. They rely almost completely on volunteers, as I found out personally from the five who so willingly showed up at 5 am on a Sunday morning to help us out.
Whether one family loses a few belongings in a house fire, a military family needs help with contact and support, thousands of people in a town get wiped out by a flood or storm, or a lone person’s life depends on getting a blood transfusion after an accident, these fantastic volunteers are there and ready to help. My housemates and I have discovered from the donations and other help coming from so many directions how wonderfully generous and kind people can be. So, let me encourage you, the next time you have a few extra hours or dollars to give, picture yourself as a person in any kind of imminent need, think how tremendously grateful you would be to have someone there to help you, and give a little to the Red Cross.
