Church Picnic
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Goodbye, Irene Picnic
Twenty-two days ago, they were strangers. Then, Tropical Storm Irene came, creating bonds that these flood victims will never forget.
"I just wanted to come and say thank you," Donna LaGone tells FOX23 News. During the storm, Donna and her husband slept in their car outside of their Stockade home in case they needed to escape the rising floodwaters.
She explains, "It came up to my driveway - the crack in my driveway it came up to it and stopped." [But] the LaGones didn't totally escape Irene's wrath. Wind ripped the back porch of their North Street home and rain poured into their kitchen.
Help came from people Donna had never met
Donna says, "My flood damage didn't come from the bottom; it came from the top." Help came from people Donna had never met.
Rev. Larry Roff has been the pastor at Schenectady's First Presbyterian Church for two years. "I came from South Florida to get away from hurricanes," he jokes.
After Irene, Rev. Roff and his parishioners took to the Stockade streets. He tells FOX23 News, "We started going down in those days immediately after [the storm] and we were taking food to them several times a day, meeting them, talking with them on the streets, weeping with them over their loss."
Now that the floodwaters have receded, the church is celebrating new beginnings.
The annual church picnic was originally scheduled for August 28th - the day that Tropical Storm Irene hit. The rescheduled picnic was held in the church parking lot to make it easier for the flood victims to attend.
Rev. Roff says, "They're not members of our church, but they're our neighbors."
Many of those neighbors are now friends and everyone is stronger because of what they've experienced.
Donna says surviving the storm has reinforced her list of what she needs if she ever finds herself in trouble:
"I want to be, one, with a New Yorker and, two, with a Schenectadian. Three: with a Stockadian."