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Students come to take part in tornado recoveryFree Access


A group of college students came to First Presbyterian Church in Calvert City last week to help rebuild homes in Marshall and Graves Counties that were damaged by the December 10, 2021 tornado. In the photo above, seated from left to right are Nurbu Lhendup, Drew Shonka, Milton Dickens CLP for First Presbyterian Church, standing left-to-right Christina Lngibire, Iz Stokes, Prabin Khadka, Duncan Jones, Emanuel Fitsum, Rachel Parajuli, Eli Kanfer, Amanda Clifford, Mark Harrington, and Will Velez. – Photo by Loyd Ford/The Lake News.

By Loyd Ford/The Lake News

Eleven college students and an advisor gave up their spring break to come to Calvert City and stay at First Presbyterian Church for a week while they did work on homes in Marshall and Graves Counties that had been damaged by the December 10, 2021 tornado. They were here all of last week and worked in two groups, Monday and Tuesday they all worked in Marshall County near Kentucky Lake and for the remainder of the week most of the group went to do demolition work on a home in Mayfield.

Nine of the students came from Hamilton College, which is located in Clinton, NY, while two of them came from Dennison University in Granville, OH. None of the students knew each other before they decided to come on the trip. Two of the students were from Nepal, one from Bhutan and another from Burundi. Others came from towns and cities through out the northeast, none of them had ever been to western Kentucky.

They gained some insights from their trip. Iz Stokes, who is from Cleveland, OH said finding a razor and shaving crème in a home she was helping to demolish in Mayfield reminded her that the house had been someone’s home. Stokes is a student at Dennison University.

Amanda Clifford, who is from upstate New York and a student at Hamilton University, talked about learning about how homes where constructed and what the walls actually looked like inside them.

The work group is the second and largest so far to stay at the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance host site that has been developed at First Presbyterian Church in Calvert City. Members of the church and members of First Presbyterian Church in Paducah worked to put together the host site last summer and fall.

Sixteen beds from Starfish Ministries in Paducah were installed in rooms in the church to provide sleeping rooms for volunteer workers coming here to work on homes in Marshall and Graves Counties. Groups will be coming more frequently in the coming months. The facility is currently booked all summer long.

Wednesday night the church provided a meal for the students and church members. The students talked about their experiences and members of the congregation got to speak with them individually and talk about the tornado and the effort to put the host site together at the church.

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