World of Good, Lumber Yard Style

Welcome to The Scratching Post and another Wednesday WOrld of Good (WOG)! A very nice reader emailed me this story so I thought I'd share it with you for this week's WOG.

A little while ago, I wrote about getting stuck in the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport while on the way home from a business trip. Bad weather had rolled through the area and DFW was a mess. Every flight was delayed and many had been cancelled. Lots of people in the terminal were outraged at having been inconvenienced. Anger and recriminations were commonplace as the airlines struggled to cope with the weather.

At a nearby lumber yard, the story was evolving differently. An F1 tornado had ripped through the area causing tremendous damage.

The owner of the lumber yard, Jerry Kurosky, remained hospitalized Sunday. He suffered a serious facial cut, numerous bruises, and nearly lost an ear when he was struck by a piece of flying wood.

But one of the company's employees, and a resident of the neighborhood—40-year-old Marc Patterson—was killed in the violent storm. Doctors said he suffered a heart attack while trying to hold on to some lumber as the storm blew in.

Neighbors, friends and members of local churches turned out soon afterwards to do what they could to help.

On Sunday more than 100 people from the neighborhood and several nearby churches pitched in to help a family in need, and Kurosky's family was grateful...The move to clean up the lumber yard started as a word-of-mouth effort from several pulpits. "We heard about this Sunday here, today at church," said volunteer Ben Brights. "We decided to come out and do what we can to help."

"The fellow here needs a lot of help," said volunteer Monte Roths. "Obviously, it hit here the hardest. The love he has for other people—he's the type of person who would help another before he helps himself."

It wasn't just about the lumberyard. It was about helping others in need.

The Oakview Street volunteers, about 70 in all, worked quickly and by 3 p.m. had moved from the lumber yard to Kurosky's neighbors.

Linda Cisneros, whose family has been staying with her mother-in-law since the storm, returned to her home Sunday afternoon to find a stranger dragging tree limbs from her yard.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," said Cisneros, who is married with two children. "A man came and told us it would cost $3,000 to fix everything, but we don't have that kind of money."

About a dozen members of the Tarrant Baptist Association's disaster response team came to help on their own accord, member Delbert Timmes said.

"We'll probably be here tomorrow, too, until it's done," Timmes said. "This is what God called us to do."

Now that's a World of Good.