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Camp Christmas – a local volunteer effort to provide much-needed holiday cheer for families and children displaced by Hurricane Helene – provided 1,300 hot meals over the course of the weekend, according to the event's Head of Food and Beverage Mike Turpin.
Camp Christmas was a collaborative effort spearheaded by local event planner Whitney Gorbett and supported by Kingston Springs community leaders that offered a respite for 80 people from Hendersonville, North Carolina at Bethany Hills Camp Dec. 20 through 23.
The displaced families – including a group of foster children – gathered in Kingston Springs for a weekend of holiday festivities, support and healing. The weekend featured a variety of activities aimed at providing emotional and physical support, including photos with Santa, Christmas tree decorating, square dancing and plenty of eating.
"We were prepared to provide 1,300 meals in three days for the amount of people and volunteers we had," Turpin said. "We've had snacks and finger foods out all day long and drinks. It could never have been done without the generosity of everybody in Kingston Springs."
Turpin, who also leads The ARK Community and Resource Center in South Cheatham, said the kitchen was open at least 15 hours of every day. "We just eat, eat, eat," he said. Dozens of volunteers and several local businesses are to thank for feeding that many people in one weekend. El Jardin, Fat Tiger Korean BBQ and Loveless Cafe each provided one meal throughout the weekend.
"This community is so generous and so great that they always come through, they always step up, they always give what they can," Turpin said. "There's never been a time when we've ever asked for anything that the community hasn't provided for, and normally it's for Pegram and Kingston Springs, but we we had to reach out to our neighbors in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, because this has just been a tragic event."
Turpin, who was on the organizing committee for Camp Christmas said he wasn't sure what to expect from the weekend originally, but that it turned out "magical."
"I didn't know the trauma that certain families have gone through ... but it's just truly been a weekend where people have let their guard down and relaxed," he said. "So it's truly, in three days, been a remarkable thing."
Turpin said the Camp Christmas team has discussed offering a similar event in the spring, but hopes the families are able to get back to some type of normality sooner than that.
Amy Davis-Bruce, who served as the head of hospitality for Camp Christmas, said they saw about 60 volunteers over the course of the weekend.
Davis-Bruce said Camp Christmas was able to meet a lot of needs for families that lost everything in Helene – like coats, blankets and shoes – but that she was mostly proud of the connections and community that was built between the survivors.
"Saturday afternoon, there were two families in the main area of the lodge, and I just walked past and they were in here playing Uno together," she said. "And I thought that's great, because that's what you do at Christmas. You just sit around a fire and play games."
She continued, "They wouldn't necessarily be able to do that at home, because there's always too much to do. They're in survival mode. So it was great that they had moments like that here for a few days."
In North Carolina, Helene killed 103 and caused nearly $60 billion in damage, according to an updated report from the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management. The same report says 73,000 homes suffered "large-scale" damage.
If you missed out donating to help Helene survivors, the Camp Christmas team recommends sending aid to Crisis Recovery and Relief, a dedicated team of trained disaster response and relief professionals committed to bringing immediate, impactful aid to communities affected by natural disasters.