In 2016, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of The United States hard. Really hard. My daughter had just gotten married six weeks before and had moved into her new house at the end of a lagoon down the shore.
I can say down the shore because I live in Northern New Jersey and the shore – that is, the sea shore – is south of me. However the term down the shore got started, its been around as long as I can remember, which would be high school in the 1980s. We went down the shore a lot during high school in the 1980s. Its was never down to the shore or let’s go to the beach. It was just down the shore and down the shore we went. I remember well one particularly drive down the shore in early April of my Junior year. Having just gotten my drivers license six or so weeks before, my friends and I took advantage of the first semi-warm Sunday and loaded into my father’s yellow Chevy Citation with our striped beach towels, a bunch of quarters for the Parkway tolls and enough sunglasses, Sun-In, cute bathing suits, and seventeen year old girl ideas to get us in real trouble.
Trouble wasn’t to be had that day in the form of boys (that was to come) or drinking (though we never had problems finding alcohol at home). The trouble came from a much higher power. The warmth of the early spring sun, the ocean air and that first time feeling of being truly free in our teenage world – a car, no parents, 70 or so miles from home, a few bucks in our pockets. I was the driver that day and I remember my friend with the long blonde hair sitting behind me in the back seat. Once we hit the Parkway, everyone found it hysterical – including me – when she reached around the driver’s seat to put her hands over my eyes while I was driving. We’d scream and laugh and never give a second thought to any possible consequences. We were invincible, if only to ourselves. We survived our own stupidity and made it to the beach early that day, laying our blankets along side one another and setting up our big boom box to loudly draw attention to us and our escapades. I remember how happy we were just lying in the sand thinking we were tanning. Lying there for hours and hours. And hours. The breezes kept us cool while the sun kept us warm and the place where those two entities met was glorious and exactly what teenage girls needed at the end of a particularly snowy winter. The only thing we didn’t think about was sunblock.
Sometimes teenage judgement isn’t what it should be and though the day was epic , we all came down with serious sun poisoning that kept some of us home from school for the next week. I remember trying to find something called Second Skin to put on my face. In fact, it was our faces that took the brunt of the burning, and recovery was painful and at the same time teenage-hysterical to us, as we met in school surveying the remnants of blisters and scabs that covered our faces. The breezes had kept us alternating between blankets and bikinis that day, so our bodies didn’t suffer as our faces did. To this day I blame some of my freckles and wrinkles on 17 year old me.
So, in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy battered so much of New Jersey, including brutally tearing up my beloved shore, I was not prepared for what was to follow. My daughter and new son-in-law evacuated to their in-laws and those of us up North hunkered down and the storm did its thing. When the sun dared show its face again and the blue skies that always seem to follow terrible weather appeared, we got into the car and drove down to my daughter’s home to see if it had flooded. On the way there, we saw mile long lines of cars on the Garden State Parkway, as gas was suddenly at a premium and lines snaked out of the rest area stations. We discussed a plan of action on the way down and knew that we only had enough gas to make it down and back home that night. As we got off at their exit, we began to see people lined up at powerless supermarkets, large homes knocked off their foundations and worse, and gas stations without any power and those with power were without any gas.
Long story short, the newlywed’s home survived the storm, though the water had sat outside of their home so long that replacing sheetrock, insulation, and some of the utilities in their home was an unwelcome way to spend the first year of their marriage. Not having heat and electricity restored until December was another hardship they faced. We drove home from our visit that night concerned about their safety and well-being, and concerned that our gas tank now read 1/4 tank and wondering what the hell do we all do next.
The school I worked at would be closed for the next two weeks, as electricity was being restored. A series of events to be written about at a later time lead to me sitting at my kitchen table a week or so later wondering what all of these displaced people were going to do when Thanksgiving rolled around less than a month later. I don’t really know how the idea occurred to me, but I set up a Facebook Page and named it A Place At The Table. I made a post asking if anyone was interested in being matched with a family in need of assistance. I Shared the post on my own page and asked my own friends to Share the post with their friends, which they did. At the same time, I promoted the Page on one of the many Groups and Pages that were started to help with the recovery and rebuilding efforts. I then used Google Docs to set up forms and spreadsheets. The forms allowed those wanting to help to enter their info, including just how much they wanted to help, and those in need of immediate assistance to state their need. The energy of those days was electric, as the numbers on the page went from 50 to 500 to 1200 to over 2,500. People signed up to give and to receive and it was truly a beautiful thing. Sure there was the occasional person asking for a video game subscription or a completely luxe item that made it clear they weren’t sincere, but for the most part, I spent my days after work matching people by budget, need and area of the state. I’d email the donor a little info about the recipient along with their email address and the donor would then take it from there. It went along swimmingly and we even got on the local evening news…and then Facebook called.
Its not everyday that Facebook – well, actually Facebook’s PR company – calls you (how did they get my number?) and asks you if you’d be okay “talking to the media”. Now, I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but I told the woman okay. As soon as I said that, she ended the call, leaving me no number to contact her. Within a few minutes, the phone rang again. It was CBS Evening News asking if they could interview me because they wanted to do a story on what I was doing. So I did. Then the phone kept ringing.. I ended up with stories and mentions on a number of news outlets including CNN, The NY Times, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, etc. It was an exciting, exhausting time. I was working at school during the day and matching and coordinating at night. I’d race home to work to meet my husband and a big black SUV would roll up to the house to take us to NYC for an interview. I was getting to the point where I wondered who would cook my own family’s Thanksgiving dinner as my time was at such a premium. And so in the end, we helped a large number of people give and receive Thanksgiving dinner that year. Some brought entire meals to strangers’ homes and others invited the displaced to join them at their own celebrations. It was truly a year of thanks.
If you read this far, I thank you and I have one more thing to let you know. A Place At The Table has once again activated the Donor and Recipient forms in order to provide some relief to those who are without a paycheck during this government shutdown. You can choose to lend a hand to those who need a hand at this moment in the form of groceries or a gas card to help them get to work or drive kids to school. Maybe there’s some other way you can help. Here is the info and the links. Go to A PLACE AT THE TABLE and LIKE and SHARE the page, if nothing else.
If you can help, sign up at ttp://www.tinyurl.com/APATTDonor
To request assistance, sign up at p://www.tinyurl.com/APATTRequest
And I also ask you to Share, Share, Share so others can help and those who need it can request it! LET’S DO THIS!!
And millions of thanks and hugs to those of you who have already signed up to donate and lend support to families that are hurting right now. You guys rock!
Geneiveve Kaufman Writes 