Hurricane Harvey Recovery Team’s Final Funds Go to AMEN Food Pantry

When relief donations first started arriving in La Grange after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, they went to churches and to the La Grange Ministerial Association. The ministers decided to create a separate non-profit organization to tackle recovery and the Fayette County Disaster Recovery Team was born.

On Monday, the DRT closed out its bank account, donating all remaining funds, some $13,842, to the AMEN food pantry in La Grange – another organization originally launched by the Ministerial Alliance.

Scott Elliott, minister of the Church of Christ here and president of the alliance, expressed appreciation for the gift to AMEN, more officially known as the Area Ministries for Emergency Needs. Record high numbers of families received help in November, he noted, so the funds come at a particularly important time.

AMEN’s food pantry, at 851 S. Reynolds St., provides groceries and basic needs assistance to eligible clients every Monday morning.

The final Hurricane Harvey project that the DRT was involved in is a new city park in the Hope Hill development. On Thursday, Dec. 14, the City of La Grange will open bids for park construction.

“Back in September 2022, we donated $50,000 to the city to go toward the Hope Hill park,” said Larry Jackson, DRT president. Due to a matching grant from the state, that meant $100,000 toward the park.

“It looks like that park is finally going to happen,” Jackson said. When the DRT first drew up plans for the Hope Hill subdivision, where homes for Hurricane Harvey survivors would be built, a large tract was set aside as a future park.

“We were just thinking of a soccer field or something, but the city came up with a state grant that will provide a great city park for that entire side of town,” Jackson said.

Working with Samaritan’s Purse, Mennonite Disaster Service, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Central Texas Food Bank, Texas Habitat for Humanity and numerous other groups, the DRT channeled more than $6.8 million in relief to Hurricane Harvey survivors here.

Besides the Hope Hill subdivision, three brand new homes were built in 2018 and seven more in 2019. Many more were cleaned up and rehabilitated by volunteers, while DRT provided temporary housing for numerous families displaced by the flooding. Almost from the beginning, Virginia Leech has served as DRT secretary and Phil Oestreich has been treasurer since August 2018. Joy Cameron was the original DRT president.

“Joy accomplished the amazing connection we had with Samaritan’s Purse and just became a fulltime, unpaid volunteer in the recovery effort,” Jackson said. “We never could have done it without her.”

Carol Martyr is vice president of the DRT board. The other members are Dr. Bob Heath and Marsha Pyle.

“We agreed in late 2020 that the recovery effort was basically complete, but that we would retain records for legal purposes for three years,” Jackson said. “Those three years are now up, and we are officially out of business.”