It is a Thanksgiving Day like no other in Western North Carolina.
Much like the pilgrims are said to have endured great hardship in 1620 in Plymouth colony before gathering for a feast of thanksgiving the following year, the people of Asheville and of neighboring communities and counties sit down today for holiday meals following two unimaginably wrenching and challenging months.
At least 43 people died in Buncombe County because of Tropical Storm Helene, which dropped well over one foot of rain on Asheville and more than two feet in other areas of WNC in late September. The state’s most recent count lists 11 deaths in Yancey County, 10 in Henderson County, five in Haywood County and smaller numbers in an additional 17 North Carolina counties.
Shelters filled. World Central Kitchen and other organizations fed the hungry. Vital areas, like Asheville’s River Arts District, river communities, like Swannanoa, and far-flung mountain towns, like Green Mountain, were all but washed away.
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The task of rebuilding communities, homes and businesses will stretch on for years. Many WNC residents and business-owners find their fate in the hands of FEMA aid or entangled in red tape.
Yet amid this challenge has emerged a spirit of resilience and helpfulness that has bolstered weary hands and despairing hearts. As the hashtags and signs say, #wncstrong and #ashevillestrong.
Perhaps Asheville Fire Chief Michael Cayse summed up best the strength of WNC residents at Asheville’s Oct. 22 candlelight vigil honoring all the community has lost. He noted in his career he has responded to calamities ranging from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center to multiple hurricanes.
Then he said this: “Helene has showed me something that I hadn’t seen previously. Helene gave me an understanding of what resilience is. Helene showed me what the collective power of community is. Helene showed me what Asheville is.”
On Thanksgiving Day, the Citizen Times shares these eight accounts of how a range of WNC residents was approaching Thanksgiving this year:
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‘Bittersweet’ Thanksgiving with a baby on the way post-Helene
Emily Russell talks about the damage from Tropical Storm Helene that flooded her Swannanoa community. She has been living in a recreational vehicle and with family since the September 2024 storm flooded the Swannanoa River.
With her second child due just days after Thanksgiving, Emily Russell hoped to host family at her childhood home in Swannanoa this year. But those hopes were dashed when floodwaters trapped her inside her home, where she floated on a mattress with her dog for nearly eight hours before being reunited with her husband, David, and 9-year-old daughter, Natalie.
In the two months since Helene, an army of volunteers has mucked out the inside of her home and restored electricity, plumbing and insulation. It’s “bittersweet” that they won’t have the Thanksgiving she planned, but Russell is grateful the stream of volunteers hasn’t slowed.
“We went from being told this house was being bulldozed, to where I didn’t think we’d ever come home, to now we might get to bring the baby home the first of the year,” Russell said. “So I’m just thankful that everybody has really stepped up, helped and done all this for my family.”
She started college in September. Then Helene hit
College student Anna Robinette works for the Fours Sisters Bakery at the Asheville City Market in downtown Asheville, NC, Saturday morning November 23, 2024.
When Anna Robinette arrived in Ridgecrest for her first semester of school at Excel College, she was worried about finding a job to pay for tuition. Two weeks later, she had much bigger problems: Tropical Storm Helene knocked out her water and power for days and decimated the small towns she admired upon arrival.
But the devastation only brought Robinette, 19, closer to her new community. She watched in awe as her fellow students transformed the school into an aid distribution center and her church, Valley Hope, provided daily hot meals and brainstormed ways to help small business owners get back up on their feet.
“I’m thankful that I get to be here and here at this time so I get to experience all of this,” Robinette said as she sold croissants, cinnamon buns and sourdough from the Four Sisters Bakery.
Body care business owner ‘so joyful’ to have clean water again
Organic bodycare product maker Heidi Vasone (left) talks with Chavaun Letman at the Asheville City Market in downtown Asheville, NC, Saturday morning November 23, 2024..
Like many other Asheville residents, Heidi Vasone is simply grateful to be alive after Tropical Storm Helene. But the storm stirred up other, darker feelings, too. As recovery continues, Vasone said many are grappling with lingering anxiety and “not feeling worthy of having water and shelter because of all the people that died and people still in tents.”
“There’s just a real, raw feeling,” Vasone added.
So as Thanksgiving approaches, Vasone, owner of Bonny Bath, has taken extra care to check in with each customer who visits her stand at the city’s farmers markets, where she’s been selling organic body care products for 15 years. She embraces them before they leave.
She hopes that the city getting clean water back means her customers can finally take a moment to do something as simple as taking a relaxing bath.
“It’s so joyful to have that fresh water again,” she said.
Despite ‘financial unknowns,’ beekeeper grateful for friends, family and of course, bees
Fairview, NC resident Charlie Blakely sells honey sells honey at the Asheville City Market in downtown Asheville, NC, Saturday morning November 23, 2024. Looking at the honey are Asheville residents Jim Tebay and Debra Walker.
In the mountains, honey is only produced three months out of the year and with nearly half of Charlie Blakley’s colony lost to starvation after the storm, the 34-year-old is facing “a lot of financial unknowns.”
“I’m the only person who works in the business, so it’s been hard to manage the loss and then selling the honey and then trying to get into new things, all while still like being in a disaster zone,” said Blakley, who lives in Fairview.
In spite of the uncertainty, Blakley said they’re thankful that their loved ones pitched in with bottling and working the markets for them, especially while they attended the funeral of a friend who died during the storm.
“Grateful that I still have a house and a bridge to cross, my vehicle’s okay,” they said. “And grateful for the bees, that I still have a business that I can work.”
‘Disasters like this bring out the best and worst of humanity’
Scott Kinghorn, an area resident, shares a video with Bettina Freese and Cat Matlock about what he saw the after the flooding at the Red Hill Toe River Public Access site for the North Toe River in Green Mountain, NC on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024.
When Cat Matlock moved to Asheville in 2004, she remembers the waters rising high.
Tropical Storm Helene put that to shame.
Matlock is a yoga teacher and massage therapist, the founder and former owner of West Asheville Yoga and who currently runs Free Body Trigger Point Massage Clinic and Training Center.
She rode out the late September storm in her apartment, watching a family of bears weather the elements from her porch. When the weather cleared, she went with a neighbor to the hospital to see his mom, who had been there when it hit. Matlock said the bathrooms were overflowing.
After five days, Matlock evacuated to Florida to stay with her father, who is ill. They wound up riding out Hurricane Milton there. She stayed in Florida for three weeks to help with her father’s health problems and came back to revive her Asheville business.
On Nov. 23, she took a rare day off to help her friend Bettina Freese clean up trash in Green Mountain, located in Yancey County.
“I feel like disasters like this bring out the best and worst of humanity,” Matlock said. “There’s no middle.”
He lost two houses, yet what he’ll remember is the kindness of others
Tony Johnson, 71pauses as he talks about his family history of ownership his land going back generations near the North Toe River in Green Mountain, NC on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024.
Tony Johnson lost two houses, on the same plot of land in Green Mountain, to Tropical Storm Helene when the North Toe River rose and swept the houses down the river.
“That don’t mean much to me,” Johnson said Nov. 23. His only regret is that he can’t leave them to his descendants.
Johnson said he wasn’t scared of death during the storm. Johnson had a heart attack three years ago and underwent heart surgery. He said he wants to live to meet his great-granddaughter. She’s 3 now, and he also has an infant great-grandson.
This Thanksgiving, he is celebrating with them and is thankful his Lord Jesus Christ saved him during the storm.
What he’ll cherish from this autumn are the kindnesses of others since the tropical storm.
“I can’t believe the love and the care that people have shown,” Johnson said. “I can’t believe it. It’s amazing.”
Knife sharpener recalls how friend aided him after driveway washout
After Tropical Storm Helene caused devastation in his community, Kaleb Wallace said it calmed the community during a season of political discord. One of his businesses is sharpening knifes for customers at the Asheville City Market in downtown Asheville, NC, Saturday morning November 23, 2024.
Kaleb Wallace, who uses a wheelchair, is a staple at the Asheville City Market sharpening knives, is ready for a regular Thanksgiving.
Wallace, 43, lives near Barnardsville and couldn’t leave his property for about six or seven weeks without his friend’s help when Tropical Storm Helene destroyed the driveway to his home.
“We had a channel about 8 feet deep and 16 feet wide where the driveway had been,” he said.
His friend, who also lives on the property, constructed a ford across the creek with a tractor that used a backhoe and a bucket to make the slopes in the creek bottom more gentle.
“We just did it the one time and left the vehicles on the road,” Wallace said.
His friend would carry him about 30 or 40 feet across the creek to get to the vehicles.
The culvert and driveway were replaced about two weeks ago.
“Things have changed but not in terms of Thanksgiving,” he said. “For me, it is just about gathering with the people I love and being grateful for what we have and sharing a meal.”
At Thanksgiving, accordionist mourns ‘wonderful soul’ who hosted house concerts
Accordionist Paul Gisondo plays at the Asheville City Market in downtown Asheville, NC, Saturday morning November 23, 2024.
Accordionist Paul Gisondo admits to not knowing what to feel about Thanksgiving after Tropical Storm Helene.
Gisondo, 64, feels like he knows his Asheville neighbors better after he helped cut down trees and get water for them.
“I guess I’m thankful for that sense of community that came out of it,” Gisondo said. “I just have a great appreciation for life.”
But he also feels sadness in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster to strike WNC in living memory.
Reporters Alex Gladden, Wes Woods II and N’dea Yancey-Bragg and photographers Mike Cardew and Doral Chenoworth are USA TODAY Network journalists reporting for the Asheville Citizen Times in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene.
“My heart is extremely heavy for those who lost a lot including their lives,” he said. “I know somebody who perished ― his house was swept away with him in it.”
Gisondo said the man’s name was Lyn McFarland and he thinks of him a lot because of his generosity.
“He was a wonderful soul who hosted artists and musicians at his house for house concerts,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: A Helene Thanksgiving: How Western North Carolina is marking holiday
