Monday was supposed to be the first day back from spring break.
Plans changed when an EF-3 tornado ravaged the town late Friday and destroyed 16 homes. After Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation officials canceled school, 200 staff members banded together to aid with tornado clean-up. They met at Whiteland Community High School Monday morning and afternoon and traveled by school bus to the Park Forest neighborhood, where staff members picked up tree limbs and pieces of debris from destroyed homes.
The call for volunteers came from a mass email Sunday. The volunteers worked in two shifts, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., said Benji Betts, the high school’s principal.
“We didn’t know if we were gonna get four or 400 people, so it’s pretty nice. You’ve got homes in Park Forest that are devastated and there are trampolines in trees and we’re doing whatever we can do to help get all the debris out,” Betts said. “The biggest impact I’ve seen is just the caring and outpouring of support for everybody.”
Break-O-Day Elementary School third-grade teacher Desirae Bockelman said some of her students were affected by the tornado, and volunteering to help clean up might help them recover from the storm.
“Some of my students are literally two blocks down and I know their house was affected and I couldn’t just take the day off,” Bockelman said. “It was mind-blowing to see it up close. It’s crazy that it can actually happen in your community.”
To see the community coming together to help out, however, didn’t shock her at all.
“It’s amazing, but I’m not shocked,” she said. “Everyone from Break-O-Day wanted to come and help. There’s already so many people here from our elementary schools. I knew for sure we would all be involved somehow.”
Although not part of the group of staff members who volunteered, Whiteland High School senior Hailey Chambers spent the day helping people whose homes bear little resemblance to what they looked like a week ago.
“It was really heartbreaking and being out here helping is really nice,” Chambers said. “I’m just hoping that the people around here feel better knowing that they have all this help and support from everyone. I just hope that everybody out here is helping them tremendously right now.”
While cleaning up the aftermath of a tornado can seem like a monumental task, the Whiteland community was able to join forces to make it happen, said Garrett Godsey, head choir director for the high school.
“What I’ve loved to see is just the community come together on something like this and just how many people are here helping out. Just the team effort to clean something like this up is immense, and people have shown up for it. It’s really inspiring to see that,” Godsey said. “I hope the people who were affected end up getting what they need, move forward and recover from this. I hope the community grows stronger.”
