Maryville Loves Per­ryville

We have all thought “that will never hap­pen to me,” at least once in our lives. How­ever, for Maryville stu­dent Karly Hu­ber, it was the ex­act op­po­site. On the evening of Feb­ru­ary 28, 2017, an EF4 tor­nado hit the north­east­ern por­tion of Perry County, Mis­souri, lev­el­ing the homes of many. Ac­cord­ing to Per­ryville Mayor Ken Baer, “At least 30 and as many as 60 [homes] would be con­sid­ered lev­eled to their foun­da­tion. Sixty fam­i­lies lost just about every­thing.”

One of these homes be­longed to the Hu­ber fam­ily. When asked about how she felt the night of the tor­nado, Karly Hu­ber said, “We knew bad weather was go­ing to hit, but you never think that it’s go­ing to be you as the vic­tim. I was try­ing to get ahold of my par­ents, but they weren’t an­swer­ing. But I just thought, it’s okay they just aren’t an­swer­ing. It was a real shock.”

Maryville Uni­ver­sity is well-at­tended by Per­ryville res­i­dents and had been for many years due to the qual­ity of the Health Sci­ence pro­grams, as well as the fact that it is only 90 miles south of St. Louis. It was no sur­prise that a Maryville stu­dent was af­fected by the tor­nado. Know­ing that, Maryville did what it does best— banded to­gether to help those in need. Af­ter all, one team, one fam­ily.

Pres­i­dent Lom­bardi sent out a cam­pus-wide email the fol­low­ing day of the tor­nado ad­dress­ing the con­cerns some Maryville stu­dents may have had about the re­sources pro­vided for them on cam­pus and what was be­ing done to help those af­fected re­gard­less of whether or not they were Maryville stu­dents or alumni. In his email, Pres­i­dent Lom­bardi stated, “Maryville is a com­mu­nity that comes to­gether in times of need.” As both a res­i­dent of Per­ryville and a stu­dent at Maryville, I could not agree with this state­ment more.

The night of the tor­nado, Jen­nifer Mc­Cluskey, vice pres­i­dent for Stu­dent Suc­cess and Per­ryville na­tive, per­son­ally con­tacted each Per­ryville stu­dent and asked if their fam­i­lies had been af­fected. She then of­fered Maryville as­sis­tance in the way of on-cam­pus coun­sel­ing. The fol­low­ing day, Mc­Cluskey in­vited us to a meet­ing to dis­cuss pos­si­ble re­lief ac­tiv­i­ties that could be held on cam­pus. Not only did 20 Per­ryville stu­dents at­tend the meet­ing, but Chris­t­ian Kjaers­gaard, a soc­cer player from Swe­den, also at­tended the meet­ing to find out if there was any­thing the soc­cer team could do to help.

It’s was de­cided at the meet­ing to put bins around cam­pus to col­lect do­na­tions such as non­per­ish­able goods, per­sonal hy­giene prod­ucts and laun­dry sup­plies. The bins were placed in each of the res­i­dence halls, as well as Buder, Gan­der, Si­mon, the DUC and the li­brary on March 3. Within ten days, they had col­lected an en­tire van full of sup­plies to be de­liv­ered to Hu­ber to be dis­trib­uted to other vic­tims of the tor­nado.

On March 13, the first day of spring break, Mc­Cluskey and sev­eral stu­dents loaded the do­na­tions into a Maryville Uni­ver­sity van and de­liv­ered them to Per­ryville for those in need. “It was amaz­ing,” Hu­ber said. “I did­n’t know if any other Maryville stu­dents had been af­fected. We were very ap­pre­cia­tive of their help. Right now we’re still kinda fig­ur­ing it all out.”

It is im­por­tant to ex­er­cise cau­tion dur­ing dan­ger­ous weather. Down­load­ing weather apps, keep­ing your phone charged and keep­ing in touch with you fam­ily mem­bers is a great way to stay as safe as pos­si­ble. But in the event of a weather cri­sis, Maryville will al­ways be here to pro­vide its sup­port.