At Eckerd College, a private liberal arts school in St. Petersburg, Fla., back-to-back hurricanes displaced its student body for more than a month. The campus evacuated about a week before Hurricane Helene hit in late September, and the school was still repairing electrical damage from the storm surge when it was hit by fierce winds from Hurricane Milton just two weeks later.
On Monday, Oct. 28, 2024, classes finally resumed on campus, and so did a sense of normalcy.
Faculty and staff greeted students during their move-in return over the weekend with doughnuts, a snow cone truck, and lots of hugs and smiles. Even Eckerd President James J. Annarelli was on hand, passing out treats as students arrived.
“We wanted to make them feel like we feel: relieved that they are back. We missed them so much,” says Robbyn Mitchell Hopewell, assistant vice president of communications at Eckerd. “It’s a very close-knit community.”
Credit: Chris Brennan
The school, founded in 1960 as Florida Presbyterian College, is a member of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities, and it’s one of several Presbyterian-related schools that were damaged and disrupted by two recent major hurricanes in the southeastern U.S.
At Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina, classes are set to resume on campus Nov. 4 after the extensive recovery needed following Helene. The storm damaged buildings and power lines, and water and sewer services in town were only recently restored. Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, about two hours southwest of Banner Elk and just outside of Asheville, has extensively cleaned and sanitized buildings in order to welcome students back on Oct. 27.
At Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, the situation has stabilized since Helene downed around 40 trees on campus and damaged 40 more, says Rev. Dr. Buz Wilcoxon, Presbyterian College chaplain and dean of spiritual life.
“We have worked really diligently over the last 3 weeks to return to as much of a sense of normalcy as possible,” he says.
Rev. Dr. Anita Olson Gustafson, Presbyterian College president, says the loss of the 100-year-old oak trees was one of the biggest shocks.
“I realized how deeply vested our alumni are in the feel and look of the campus. It was almost a visceral reaction,” Gustafson says.
The sounds of chainsaws, wood chippers and stump grinders still echo through the air, but students have been back on the campus, which is in upstate South Carolina, since early October, and the majority of operations are back to normal.
Grief and other complicated emotions linger, however. “Our attention has shifted to how we connect with, support and care for neighbors in the community,” Wilcoxon says.
Plans in place
At Eckerd, more than 80% of its 1,900 students come from outside of Florida, which means they are often less familiar with severe weather situations, and about 88% of students live on campus.
That’s why Eckerd and its emergency management executive team require students to create a hurricane evacuation plan during fall orientation, Hopewell says.
“It’s important for us to keep track,” she says. “Student health and safety is a priority.”
Hopewell says the school is a well-oiled machine when it comes to hurricane preparation. Administration stays in constant contact with the city and county and always recommends evacuating 24 or even more hours before the local governments call for it.
“This gives our students the opportunity to catch flights or book hotel rooms,” she says.
At Presbyterian College, with about 1,000 undergrads, most students come from nearby areas like South Carolina and Georgia, which were also in the storm’s path. So when it came time to evacuate before the storm, many had nowhere to go.
“We asked students to leave if they were able, but not all were able,” Wilcoxon says. About 100 students stayed on campus, in dorm rooms with no power, and resident assistants did walkthroughs every two hours to check on students.
“During unprecedented times, we have to prioritize care for one another,” he says.
“During unprecedented times, we have to prioritize care for one another.” — Buz Wilcoxon, Presbyterian College chaplain and dean of spiritual life
Grief and support
Caring for one another was top of mind when students finally returned to campus at Presbyterian College. Wilcoxon and the school organized an outdoor worship service and reopening ceremony the day after classes resumed.
The group walked through campus, stopping at three key symbolic spaces.
“We wanted to carve out time to name the diverse emotions and experiences people were bringing back to campus,” Wilcoxon says. “We set that space aside for naming aloud grief for what was lost – it could be for people and places – but also for experiences, things that were supposed to happen but didn’t.”
At the front entrance to the campus, the group named their grief. Then they walked to the bell tower at the center of campus, where a student rang the bell. “We named our gratitude for what has endured throughout the storm,” Wilcoxon says. Then they walked to the back of the campus, to an outdoor chapel that faces a Celtic cross, and “there we named our hopes for the future.”
Rev. Doug McMahon, director of the Center for Spiritual Life and chaplain at Eckerd College, has worked at the school for 15 years and was a pastor in St. Petersburg before that. He says the Presbyterian network of local churches, the presbytery, the Presbyterian College Chaplains Association, and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance have been vital in offering support after these storms, as they did in 2004 when four major hurricanes made landfall in Florida over the course of three months.
McMahon says many faculty and staff lost everything, and still have piles of belongings sitting on the curb. He says the PC(USA)’s Board of Pensions is providing grants to staff members who suffered damage and losses.
“There has been a lot of support and people reaching out,” he says. Everyone has been strong and resilient, including the students, he says.
“For many of the students, their high school years were impacted by the pandemic, and now, their first year of college, they have to start with remote classes,” McMahon says. “It’s been difficult, but everybody is grateful to be back.”
“For many of the students, their high school years were impacted by the pandemic, and now, their first year of college, they have to start with remote classes. It’s been difficult, but everybody is grateful to be back.” — Doug McMahon, director of the Center for Spiritual Life and chaplain at Eckerd College
Moving forward
Gustafson of Presbyterian College says there was a “lot of disruption,” but she’s just thankful no one on campus was hurt.
Much of campus was even cleaned up in time for homecoming the weekend of Oct. 19, which student Ella Casto-Waters says is her favorite event.
The PC senior and president of the Student Government Association is the daughter of two Presbyterian ministers who currently live in Georgia, and her mother is a PC graduate.
“It’s not an understatement to say that PC raised me. My first PC homecoming, I was 2 months old, and it’s still my favorite day of the year,” she adds. “This community has poured so much into me, and I’m so incredibly thankful for that.”
Now that she’s back at school, she’s thankful to the staff and other workers who have repaired buildings and restored order. “Our campus looks beautiful,” she says.
And while all of the schools learned important lessons about critical infrastructure needs – like which buildings needed generators – faculty, staff and students also saw what was truly paramount.
“We learned the value and the significance of what this place means, literally to the students who are here and symbolically to the broader community and alumni base,” Wilcoxon says. “We experienced that in a new way.”
“We learned the value and the significance of what this place means, literally to the students who are here and symbolically to the broader community and alumni base.” — Buz Wilcoxon, Presbyterian College chaplain and dean of spiritual life
