Pete Barresi firmly believes there are plenty of opportunities to serve one’s community.

“It’s important to stand up and help others,” the Sandy Hook resident said recently.

Sometimes that means volunteering for a fire company. Other times it means driving halfway across the country to help strangers rebuild their lives following a tornado.

Mr Barresi has done both — he is captain and a longtime member of Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue, and in May 2013, he drove with three friends to Moore, Okla., less than 24 hours after an EF5 tornado touched down there — and much more, leading by example for his three children. His oldest, Wyatt, age 12, recently surprised his father with a request to join him on a work trip.

The Barresi family — which also includes Mr Barresi’s wife, Heather, and their second son, Jackson, and daughter, Charlotte — all attend Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel. Mr Barresi is a member of the church’s Men’s Rise Up group, which had been planning for months to travel in March to North Carolina as part of a church-ordained, Christian-based mission.

“I knew Dad was going; he had already announced his plans to go,” Wyatt told The Newtown Bee recently, sitting with his father to talk about the trip.

Wyatt, who is homeschooled, approached his father with the request to join the other Men’s Rise Up members after hearing where the group was headed.

“I wanted to go because I wanted to help some people down there,” he said. “We have friends who recently moved” to North Carolina, he said. “They were affected a little by Hurricane Florence, but I still wanted to help.”

Mr Barresi loved the idea of his son joining him.

“It hit me as a wonderful opportunity for him to get out and serve,” he said. The Walnut Hill CC organizers reached out to coordinators in North Carolina to make sure Wyatt would be allowed to join the effort.

“We signed waivers, paperwork for liability release — we all had to — but they were delighted to have him,” Mr Barresi said. “They were so excited to have him.”

Walnut Hill Community Church, according to Mr Barresi, is very invested in spending money and sending help to serve others, within the country and abroad, through Church In Action. The program encompasses the church’s outreach/mission efforts.

The destination for the March trip — as well as one in January to the same area Mr Barresi was unable to participate in — was selected because its residents were still recovering from Hurricane Florence.

A sustained storm that formed on August 31, 2018, and continued to grow before dissipating on September 18, Florence caused catastrophic damage in the Carolinas, primarily as a result of flooding. The wettest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Carolinas dropped a maximum total of 35.93 inches of rain in Elizabethtown, N.C.; the Walnut Hill CC group worked in March in Kelly, N.C., just 20 miles southeast from that storm center.

It’s a small town, according to Mr Barresi. He was not wrong: the 2010 census showed a population of 544 within the 11.58-square-mile community.

“The hardware store is a 45-minute drive, or you have to do a 90-minute drive to get to Lowe’s,” he said. The town’s general store also serves as its deli, offers miscellaneous hardware, and sells lottery tickets.

“The police station is a 10-by-10-foot outpost, with two officers for the area,” he said.

Still A Great Need

Arriving six months after the massive weather event, the damage was still epic to the local team.

“There is still a great need down there,” said Mr Barresi. “It’s not a poor area, but the amount of devastation…” he added, shaking his head while his voice trailed off.

“The houses were not in low-lying lands, or normally flood plains,” he said. “But a levee broke — a levee that hadn’t been maintained for decades — and when that happened, it just sent this tidal wave through the whole the area.”

The house the Walnut Hill CC crew spent most of their time at had been built on a four-foot-tall foundation, Mr Barresi said. Nevertheless, it had 4½ inches of water in it by the time the hurricane’s water receded.

“It destroyed the sheet rock, the trim, and the doors,” said Mr Barresi. “The amount of sand that came with the water, too, that sand just lifted the porch right up.”

The house is owned by an 86-year-old man named Bill Weatherly.

“He got up at 4:30 every morning, and he was always full of energy,” said Mr Barresi. “Hard worker. He worked right there with us, from right when we got here at 8 and right until at least 6 pm, every day. He was just amazing.”

“Sometimes he would still be working after we finished for the day,” Wyatt added. “He seems like he’s a lot younger. He was awesome.”

Wyatt was clearly the youngest member of a group — the next youngest member was in his early 20s — whose ages ranged to 80 years old. In addition to the Barresis, Walnut Hill CC was represented in March by David Brewster, Rocco D’Amato, Tim Garbacik, Antony Howard, Kyle Miller, Vince Nero, and Richard Nuccitelli.

Work groups have been a steady occurrence in the area since the storm.

“Even if these people could afford to hire a contractor, it’s just not physically possible to get enough help there,” Mr Barresi said.

Picking up where the previous group had left off on Bill’s house, the Walnut Hill CC team continued with insulation and sheetrock replacement, taping joints, installing a new toilet and hot water heater, and installing two doors, among other assignments. They also did a few projects for a second house on the same street, although their time was more focused on Bill’s home.

Wyatt’s most challenging job, he said, “was spackling after the others had just finished taping one room. They handed me that can of spackle, and I was just like ‘What do I do with this?’”

By the end of the week, the house was ready for a final sanding and painting.

The homeowner was very appreciative of the work.

“He was so humble and so hospitable,” said Mr Barresi. “He had coffee ready for us every morning and was just so kind.”

Mr Weatherly's son, according to the Barresis, had his farm washed away by Florence, so he was in the midst of rebuilding his own home. The family was also dealing with the death just a few years ago of Bill’s wife.

“He was working his way slowly through that,” Wyatt said. “And he was doing a pretty good job at it.”

“He was just a nice example of somebody who has always worked hard, truly honors family, is a big part of the community, is still a good member of his church, and is faithful,” said Mr Barresi.

‘A Very Big Asset’

Many of the relief efforts are “very, very, very well organized,” according to Mr Barresi, by a number of Baptist churches in the region working as Baptists On Mission.

“They operate as one unit throughout the state,” he said. “They are still partnered with a North Carolina department, using FEMA money.”

The Walnut Hill CC group took a lot of their own tools to work with and were supplemented with additional tools from Nattmore Baptist Church, which also had a group on site that week. The men stayed in a house owned by Centerville Baptist Church, which hosted the Bethel group.

“They sponsored us and took care of us while we were there,” Mr Barresi said of Centerville Baptist. “They gave us that two-bedroom house to use, which helped cut our expenses a lot.”

Evenings were spent regrouping and resting. Wyatt, according to his father, “turned out to be a very big asset during our evening prayer time.”

The group gathered each night at 8 for evening devotionals, and Wyatt held his own within the group.

“They were floored,” he said of the group, “He shocked everybody with his Bible knowledge.”

Wyatt laughed, remembering some of the discussions.

“I said a few things about Noah and the flood,” he said. “I had great discussions with Tim, from our church, including whether or not dinosaurs were with Noah on the ark.”

(Wyatt firmly believes they were, by the way.)

The Bethel contingency is hoping to return to North Carolina at least twice before the end of the year, according to Mr Barresi. Whether the father-son team from Sandy Hook will be able to participate in either of those trips remains unseen.

Meanwhile, Mr Barresi looks back on the experience in March with Wyatt as “a powerful mission.”

“It was very healing and a very good time to not only spend with the Lord but also with men who are on the same journey, helping each other out and supporting each other,” he said. “The dedication of the people who cared for us while we were there and the compassion shown to us was just amazing.”