Above The Water

Photo by Larry McCormack/The Tennessean

The events of the past few days have been a dizzying, rain-soaked whirlwind of epic proportions.  I was in Virginia watching my brother get married on Saturday (congratulations Jared and Megan!) but thanks to the always-plugged-in world of Twitter, my friends and I were able to figure out there were some major happenings going on in our fair city.  We even left Virginia a day early to head off the second wave of storms promised over Nashville.  Thankfully, we rode right under the passing storms all night and made it safely back to the Music City.  Safe in the comfort of our respective homes, we sat glued to the TV as we watched the events of a record two-day rain unfold before us.  As each new image flashed on the screen, we feverishly sent text messages back and forth to each other noting our relief that we would have been caught driving in the rain had we not decided to leave the night before.

In the wake of the storms, the overwhelming devastation and loss facing Middle Tennessee is hard to grasp.  I am transfixed by any tidbit of information that gets passed along and yet remain unsure if I have the emotional strength to handle it all.  I drove around downtown and West Nashville yesterday evening and the scenes I saw were surreal and heartbreaking.  This is my city.  Things like this shouldn’t happen here.  And yet, they did.  While there are plenty of people who were fortunate enough not to be directly affected by the flooding (myself included), you would be hard pressed to find anyone around town who doesn’t know a few people in their lives that were.  The way the people of Nashville have responded speaks volumes to our ability to be resilient in the face of adversity.  Hmmm, where have I heard that phrase before?  How many times a season has Coach Trotz called the Predators resilient?  The team not only loves playing in this city, but they fully embody the spirit of Nashville; something I have been saying for years.  Section 303’s Patten Fuqua summed up the city (and I think, the team) quite nicely when he said, “A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.”.


If you live in the Nashville area and would like to volunteer, please visit Hands On Nashville.  They have immediate needs for a variety of volunteer opportunities and the list will continue to grow as the water recedes.  If you can’t volunteer but would like to help in other ways, you can text REDCROSS to 90999 from your cell phone and $10 will be donated to the Red Cross disaster relief efforts around Middle Tennessee.  You can also donate directly to the Middle Tennessee Red Cross chapter here.  The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee (CMFT) is probably the best organization to donate to if you want your dollars to go directly to the flood victims of Nashville and the surrounding areas.  You can donate online here.  Please consider how best you can help out in the face of such loss. 

We are all Nashville.  As a born-and-raised Nashvillian, I am proud to say I am Nashville too.