Three women join together to give Orange a hand up
Published 3:35 pm Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Randy Strong/The Orange Leader
Randy Strong/The Orange Leader Volunteers help stage the ‘marketplace’ on Friday as Harvey survivors arrive in search of needed supplies.
Randy Strong/The Orange Leader
By Dawn Burleigh
The Orange Leader
On a quiet Sunday morning, a rental truck pulled up to a residence in Little Cypress area and on Friday, the doors to a helping hand were open to the residents of Orange.
The truck traveled from Elmira, New York loaded with donations from the small town with approximately 29,000 in population. Dale Davis drove the truck from New York to Texas as a testament of his father, Doug Davis.
“The biggest thing was for my father,” Davis said. “He worked with the community and the whole area and this is part of his legacy.”
Doug Davis was a Deputy Constable, a firefighter and a roofer who worked until he was 85. While the younger Davis now resides in New York state, he was raised in Vidor, Texas.
Dale Davis spoke with his step-daughter concerning the devastation caused by Tropical Storm Harvey on the area in which he grew up.
“She and her co-worker made a flyer,” Davis said. “The items were collected at Elmira College.”
Davis was amazed at who quickly donations arrived and originally thought a smaller rental truck would be large enough to haul the items to Texas.
The college hockey team loaded the truck to the trek.
Items such as four pallets of clothing from Andy Hillfiger, Tommy Hilfiger’s brother, and six pallets of cleaning supplies were just some of the gifts delivered.
Denice Cox, a foster mother, had reached out to people to help aid Orange County with a hand up. Using Facebook Live, she would suggest items the residents in the area needed to recover from the unprecedented rains Harvey left in its wake after stalling over the county on August 30.
Cox, along with Misti Bornholdt-Winder and Joy Jacob, both local business owners, staged the items for distribution at the Long’s Warehouse building located at 200 15th Street in Orange.
Jacob recently purchased the building to convert to an event center. Jacob lost two of her three companies due to Harvey.
“We are expecting another truck,” Cox said. “These are for the people without insurance and don’t have the funds.”
The doors opened for a limited time on Friday to allow people to ‘shop’.
The next time for the doors to open for the ‘marketplace’ will be announced on the Facebook page 3 Business Women of Southeast Texas.
