A Red Cross Volunteer serves meals from an Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) to disaster victims.

Walt Ducker is a Red Cross Disaster volunteer who served during Hurricane Katrina.

It was August of 2005 and Walt was moved by the suffering Hurricane Katrina left in her wake. He signed up for Red Cross training and became an Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) driver in Gulf Port, MS. Walt reports there were about 40 ERVs in the Long Beach area, each carrying 200 to 500 meals per trip, making two trips each day. “As we went further inland, the devastation became merely severe instead of total,” he said, “driving was difficult. People had lost everything.”

“What had started out as pity on my part was quickly replaced with respect and admiration,” Walt explained, “With all this came the realization that I wasn’t looking at ruined houses, I was looking at shattered lives. Most of the time it was easy enough to laugh and kid around with people and they usually responded in kind. When I’d get on the P.A. system and announce that we’re having Chateaubriand and truffles for lunch they’d laugh and tell me it looked kind of like macaroni and cheese. I tried to keep enough Tootsie Pops on board to play “pick a hand” with the kids. They always won.

“But all the classes, all the advice and all the good humor can’t prepare you for moments like when the lady everyone calls Mary Poppins, the neighborhood spark plug who never runs out of energy or good humor, suddenly throws her arms around you, sobbing ‘I can’t, I can’t’. So you just hold her and choke back your own tears because you know she needs you to be strong for her - that tomorrow she’ll be Mary Poppins again and you’ll be offering her a Tootsie Pop or Chateaubriand.

“What class can prepare you for the lady raising her 13-year-old granddaughter alone? The child has Multiple Sclerosis and can only crawl. You carry their meals up to the porch because Grandma doesn’t walk that well herself. The girl’s eyes light up when she sees you, she smiles and tries to wave. Grandma says it’s you she’s looking for, not the food. You smile, wave back and say ‘hi good looking,’ and try to hold back the tears until you’re back in the ERV and safe. Still you know you’ll take those eyes with you to the grave. But as soon as a child throws her arms around you and says ‘thank you’ or ‘God bless you’ you’re 10 feet tall again and bullet proof.”

Katrina was his first, but Walt is still deploying on disasters. “I’ve had people tell me that what I do is unselfish, even noble. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not sure what, exactly it is that I take to a disaster but I always come home with a feeling of fulfillment I cannot describe. I have become part of a traveling fraternity, kind of a small town that moves from disaster to disaster always waiting for the next one. We don’t hope for a disaster anymore than a fireman hopes for a fire or a policeman for a crime. But when the news tells us about the latest fire, flood, tornado or hurricane, the adrenalin starts and we wait for the phone call. We know that soon we’ll feel alive again, soon we’ll be back with that other family and soon we’ll see that child again - the one that breaks our hearts and makes us 10 feet tall.”

You too can help a disaster victim with emergency shelter and meals like Walt Ducker. Disaster victims face many urgent needs, but a Red Cross response always begins with a safe place to sleep, hot food and emotional support. For $75, you can provide these essentials for one victim for an entire day, including three meals, a cot, two blankets and personal supplies. Give a family the basics they need to survive and begin to rebuild their lives. A Day’s Food and Shelter is the perfect gift for someone who has always been there for you. Visit the Holiday Giving Catalog for details.

The Words of a Red Cross Volunteer was originally published Monday, February 23, 2009, on redcross.org.

Lindsey Weber is the Marketing and Communication Associate for the American Red Cross St. Louis Area Chapter.