Extreme generosity flows like snowflakes in a blizzard

Here's a column I wrote from over the weekend:

My first real Wyoming blizzard this week reminded me of another natural disaster that happened in a time long, long ago and a place far, far away.

The colors were different back then (green twigs covered the ground after Hurricane Fran, a blanket of white for 2007’s snow that wouldn’t stop), my age was different (13 versus 24) and so too was the location (North Carolina gets more hurricanes than Wyoming).

But one thing was the same a decade and 2,000 miles later — extreme generosity garnished with an admirable amount of community spirit.

Gillette was a mess when The News-Record’s skeleton crew trudged and four-wheeled its way into work Friday morning. Major roads were mostly clear but residential neighborhoods were buried in drifts after almost 36 hours of nearly non-stop snow.

I got to work shortly before 8 a.m. after interviewing a couple of people on Granite Court who had begun helping their neighbors dig out even before the last flake hit the ground.

The same scene was unfolding over and over again Friday as people gave a push to cars here, or pulled a truck there, then blew and dug and wished away the giant white mass that had collected on the Energy Capitol of the Nation.

Most everyone gave a helping hand or had one given to them. The generous gene was gushing.

When I got to the office, one of the paper’s photographers was standing outside with a shovel. There were breakfast burritos inside, he said. They’d been delivered by the fire department. What great guys, I thought.

Where were they from, I asked.

Mona’s Cafe, he said.

Yummy. My favorite. I scarfed one down and got to work, typing and calling and no doubt driving my co-workers to the brink of insanity with my excitement.

But as the burrito settled in my stomach the reporter instinct of “Who? What? Where? Why? When? How?” went rocketing through my head.

Turns out, the burritos were meant for a breakfast safety meeting at Black Thunder mine.

With Highway 59 closed, the meeting was canceled but the order for $2,000 worth of breakfast burritos never was. Cook Robert Gonzalez, who’d spent the night making the big batch of eggs, spices and flour tortillas, wasn’t about to throw them away. He also intended to be paid for his work — he couldn’t sell them to customers and would have been hard-pressed to eat the losses. (No pun intended).

He called his friend Robert Moore, a safety official at the mine, about what to do with the food. A couple calls later and it was on the way to the fire department. Three pickup trucks distributed the tasty burritos to stranded travelers at make-shift shelters and emergency workers who had been up all night and were in need of an energy infusion that didn’t come from a vending machine.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Gonzalez said of the mine’s act. “The mines donate a lot of stuff for everybody.”

One fireman-turned-deliveryman, Capt. Frank Marrello, wasn’t surprised, either.

“That was wonderful. That’s what the mines do, they do a great job helping the community when they’re in need,” said Marrello, a volunteer fireman and equipment operator at Eagle Butte mine. “The people at the bus depot were amazed.”

Northbound bus passengers had been stranded since getting into Gillette from Rapid City, S.D., late Friday.

Marrello’s assessment was right.

While waiting to interview Gonzalez on Saturday, I struck up a conversation with Darin Mustain, an Albuquerque, N.M., man who had been on his way to his father’s funeral in Olympia, Wash.

He’d missed the Friday funeral because of the delay and was headed back home. He would leave with a strong impression of Gillette and its residents.

“Your community is great. I wouldn’t mind living here,” he said as he toyed with containers of half-and-half in a small bowl next to his coffee.

Next to him was a Wal-Mart bag filled with food local stores and restaurants had donated when they heard of the stranded passengers. Mary Kelley, marketing director at Powder River Transportation, had brought games and books.

“If you got space in there,” he told me, “tell everyone thank you, thank you very much.”

Peter Gartrell is a writer for The News-Record