On April 9, 2011 four tornadoes struck Sac County leaving piles of debris all over Steve Pickhinke's 40 acre field near Early, Iowa . The next morning, Russ Pickhinke of Sac City, and four other people went out into that field and started picking up that debris. Eight hours later with the field clean up but exhausted, Russ and his Wife, Lisa, were resting at home contemplating what it must be like for the farmers who were faced with the daunting task of getting their five and six hundred acre fields cleaned up.
As they talked, it dawned on them that with spring planting right around the corner, and so many people dealing with the loss of their homes and out buildings, a real crisis could be building. Being the kind of people that are always willing to help a neighbor, Russ and Lisa started to do that math and discovered that the farmers of Sac County were going to need more help.
...a LOT more help.
April 13_ 2011 cleanup day
On Monday night, as Lisa was picking her daughter Megan up at school, another parent mentioned to her that Newell - Fonda, a school to the north, was loading up all of their students into busses and taking them out into the fields the next day to help the farmers inn their county pick up storm debris in the fields.
Fifteen minutes later Lisa was on the phone with the East Sac County High School Principal Kevin Litterer who was an immediate enthusiastic supporter of the idea. Litterer volunteered to bring out all of the East Sac County students from 5th to 12th grade to get the fields cleaned up. The only catch was they were going to have to wait until Wednesday to hit the fields, as there just wasn't enough time to put together plans to safely shuttle over four hundred students to fields full of broken glass and sharp twisted metal by the next morning. On top of that, the weather report for Tuesday wasn't looking so hot.
According to Lisa, "That's when it started to get crazy."
As soon as she got the support of the high school principal, Lisa's phone line started heating up. She and Russ made so many calls to businesses and organizations that they utterly lost track of how many people they talked to. Suffice to say, their phone didn't get a moment's rest. When they weren't on the phone calling someone, the phone was ringing with incoming offers to volunteer.
The haze of activity continued long into the night, until Lisa and Russ collapsed, exhausted into their bed to catch a few hours of sleep before getting up the next day to continue the organizational duties of this event.
As the sun rose somewhere behind the gray clouds on that rainy April Tuesday morning. Lisa woke up to learn that Ridge View School had volunteered to join forces with East Sac County.
This doubled the workforce, but also doubled the amount of organization that needed to happen. Luckily Lisa was surrounded by folks just like herself who were ready to take charge and make it happen. Ridgeview Middle and Elementary school principal Ellen Pickhinke and Steph Erpelding of the Sac County Extension Office sprang into action using their skills and connections to get the Pork Producers and Cattle Producers lined up to feed what was sure to be a hungry crew. Denise Pickhinke went out into the wreckage and made a map of the fields that needed cleaned up.
On Tuesday night, all of the landowners came together to take stock of their equipment. The farmers themselves, having the most experience with field work, determined how much equipment they were going to need in each field. They also worked out the manner in which they were going to move that equipment around over thousands of square acres as efficiently as possible so as not to keep large groups of volunteers waiting. The most important thing they knew they were going to have to do was concentrate on safety. By Tuesday night, Lisa discovered that the number of estimated volunteers had grown to 1,300. The fields were going to be crawling with people.
I met up with Lisa in the early afternoon of Wednesday April 13 as the crew she was working with arrived at the Daryl and Jane Scharn residence. It wasn’t easy spotting her in the quarter mile long stream of students, but I stuck with it and finally located her. Before we had a chance to talk, we were interrupted by Jane Scharn. She and Lisa shared a long silent hug that says thank you in a way that words cannot. As the moment ended, Russ and Daryl joined us.
Random Fact: ALL of the landowners volunteered on all of the sites for the entire day.
As the busy day passed and the fields stood ready to be prepared for planting, (before we all knew it was going to SNOW!!!) Lisa shared with me that the real story of the April 9 tornado as far as she is concerned is that even in this day and age, being a neighbor still means something, If you’re from Iowa.
On April 18, 2011 Russ, thirteen handpicked East Sac County students as well as farmers and county workers from Sac and Buena Vista went out to finish up one dredge ditch that didn't get completed during the April 13 clean up day.
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