Woodhull Fills a Bus for
Hurricane Victims
While Hurricane Sandy shut down schools and roads in Huntington for nearly two weeks and caused innumerable other hardships, oceanfront areas of Long Island and the metropolitan area were hit even harder, with unprecedented damage and outright destruction. The Woodhull Intermediate School community responded to the tragedy in dramatic fashion.
While the hurricane is but a distant bad memory for many, the residents of Long Island’s South Shore are still dealing with the disaster, which destroyed countless homes and businesses and ruined personal belongings ranging from cars and trucks to irreplaceable family mementos. Woodhull stepped up to bring at least some degree of relief to those suffering through the calamity.
Woodhull PTA members joined with students and staff members to collect items that victims of the storm would find useful as they try to rebuild their lives. While gathering the goods was itself a challenge, finding an organization to accept and then distribute them also required a good deal of effort.
Jeanie Dempsey, Woodhull’s PTA president said she conducted research to determine which organization would accept a wide assortment of items that would strictly benefit hurricane victims. “Most centers only wanted specific items,” Mrs. Dempsey said. “Island Harvest was willing to take a variety of items.”
Once the initiative got underway it wasn’t long before an avalanche of items began to arrive at Woodhull. Among the goods were non-perishable food items, toiletries, blankets, diapers and cleaning and school supplies, including mops and brooms.
The campaign, dubbed “Fill the Bus,” involved packing a large school bus donated by Huntington Coach Corp. and parked in front of the school with relief supplies for later delivery to Island Harvest.
Woodhull student council faculty advisors Scott Armyn and Christine Barresi marshaled their troops for the relief effort with the full backing of Principal Mary Stokkers and Assistant Principal Jarrett Stein and the teaching and support staff.
“The students collected items every day for about five weeks and filled the hallways with as many donations as they could with a goal to fill a school bus with supplies for the victims hardest hit by the hurricane on Long Island,” Mrs. Dempsey said.
When the Huntington Coach bus arrived at Woodhull there was electricity in the air. “The students and staff carried the boxes of supplies out of the building and filled the bus to the top,” Mrs. Dempsey said. Students formed a type of assembly line, passing boxes one-by-one to each other until they were at the foot of the bus.
“Mary Stokkers and Jarrett Stein were there helping, along with the PTA board,” Mrs. Dempsey said. “There were well over 300 boxes of supplies. The kids were so excited. It was a great success.”
Once the items were loaded aboard the bus, Mrs. Dempsey and Susan Buchholtz, the PTA’s corresponding secretary, rode the bus to Island Harvest. The initiative would not have been possible without Huntington Coach’s cooperation. “They were so generous,” Mrs. Dempsey said. “The bus driver was great. There was absolutely no cost to Woodhull.”
“The Woodhull community genuinely put its heart and soul into helping those hit hardest by the hurricane,” Huntington Superintendent James W. Polansky said. “Walking into Woodhull and witnessing the sheer volume of items collected, one could not avoid being thoroughly impressed, as well as emotionally charged. This is yet one more example of the compassion and commitment that exists within our schools. I could not be prouder of our students, staff and parents.”