GREENVILLE—Greenville and Darke County have always stepped up to help communities hit by disasters, and now it was our turn to help our own during the Greenville tornado.
Tribute’s Eric and Kristin Fee organized several days of community support for workers, and local residents by preparing hundreds of meals.
“Right after the tornado, we wanted to do something like usual, but now it’s our community,” said Eric. “We’ve never had to do this for our community; we did this for all the other people, and it’s not just us as Tribute; it’s us as a county getting together.”
Fee realized that Greenville was going to have hundreds of workers in town who needed to be fed and citizens without electricity.
“We came together, and the whole community has been amazing,” Fee noted. “We went to ACE Hardware, Doug and Sherry Hesson donated a Blackstone grill, and we had people like Dwight Edwards, EUM Church, Radiant Lighthouse Church, the Hog Shop, Chris Campbell, Tribute, Nacho Pig, and Remedy Plumbing helping.”
EUM and Radiant Lighthouse were Wednesday’s sponsors, and Graves-Fearon Insurance Agency was Thursday’s sponsor. Arcanum’s Mike and Rachel Fearon, owners of the agency were cooking and helping at Tribute’s Greenville location.
“They’re amazing,” said Fee. “They brought all the fresh meat from Winners.”
“We do have customers in Greenville, lots of friends and family up here, and community members who were devastated by this storm,” said Mike Fearon. “We’re just helping out where we can.”
Eric Fee notes that our community donated 100 percent of the food and workers.
“Darke County can take care of itself,” he said. “We have been very blessed; everybody is giving and giving and giving. They don’t even have electricity; they have their own problems, but they still want to give.”
“It’s exciting to see the community come together and feed everybody,” Fee added. We’ve been sending some out, and many workers have been coming here to eat in the Tribute parking lot.”
By Thursday noon, the volunteers had delivered more than 250 meals to the many workers and volunteers converging on Greenville.
