Emery Wainscott
ewainscott@murraystate.edu

Camp Graves has adapted quickly to each need presented after the tornado, and now, the organization is shifting its focus to two projects that will help veterans find housing and work and one that will help Hispanic residents with housing and education.

The latter program will help Hispanic residents—and any residents who need help—with tasks such as banking, credit and other financial information with First Kentucky Bank staff.

“There were so many Hispanic families that were impacted but didn’t know how to get help, and they didn’t know where to go,” said Chair Micah Seavers. “The whole idea is to better assimilate them into Mayfield, into our area, and make sure that they become a bigger part.”

A need that office manager Cassy Basham sees is the connection between disaster resources and the city and county government—having knowledge of each other, communicating with each other and being able to refer people to each other.

“Honestly, this has been an eye opener, and a lot of the resources are now kind of doing what we’re doing and kind of tried to take note of other resources that they can pass on to the people that contact them,” Basham said.

Disaster preparedness is another issue—the tornado outbreak of December 2021 was not an event anyone could have fully prepared for. The last time an F4 tornado—the measurement scale used at the time—touched western Kentucky was in 1964, traveling through Calloway and Marshall Counties, according to weather.gov.

“In our area, everybody knew we had tornadoes,” Basham said. “We had tornadoes, a few a year, so on and so forth. …You know, it wasn’t a huge tornado, [E]F4, that smacked the main city.” 

Camp Graves wants to help fill this need—if they can fund an education building, they would host disaster preparation classes with FEMA, the Red Cross and the Certified Emergency Response Team.

Even after the tornado need is met, the temporary housing the camp has set up can still serve those who are victims of house fires, floods, a gas leak, a long-term power outage or even another tornado.

“Camp Graves can be part of this preparedness that we lack in the area,” Basham said. “Because having open housing ready to put people in after they’ve been displaced from disaster—there’s nowhere around here that does that. Nowhere.”

At the main office in Water Valley, Basham keeps a call and message log. They get calls with needs they couldn’t address, so they wrote it down, found the resource and kept them in a binder. Now, people can walk out of their office with an address and a phone number for housing.

“Here at Camp Graves, it’s about giving the people a hand up, not a handout,” Basham said. “We do help motivate folks and connect them to resources that are going to benefit their life to push them forward to where they want to be. Because everybody, you know, they have…their goal where they want to go. Everybody does.”

An obstacle Basham has come upon is their infancy. For many grants and funding opportunities, the organization has to be in operation for two or three years before they can apply. 

While Camp Graves was working to provide housing, food, heating and supplies and manage donations, they had no experience with grant writing. They didn’t realize they needed to be filling out grant applications as soon as possible or reaching out to those in administrative positions who could help with funding.

Basham now writes the grant applications but stressed she needed help. Her background does not include grant writing, and though she has adapted to the need, having someone with experience would be helpful to the organization.

Funding

Camp Graves would eventually serve the surrounding area, Basham said, including adjacent counties in western Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee.

Now, they’re at a point where to make the program last with the two- and three-year needs, they need funding.

The organization received American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which were allocated from the federal government for COVID-19 relief. However, this was only for Camp Rendezvous, their veteran housing and work project. 

Even with this funding, Basham said they will still be shy about $100,000-250,000 to finish the project.

On top of that, United Way donated $250,000, and they also received smaller donations-–both monetary and physical, like campers or food—from other organizations. These private donations are used toward their efforts.

But it’s not enough to be able to get the camp to where they want it to be. In their Hispanic housing project, Camp Sanctuary, tornado victims are living two and three families in a house. They want to get them out of that situation and into a better living arrangement.

“Rubbing pennies together and making magic,” Basham joked. “Here is how we do it: we are, one, very frugal with our money as best as possible. Secondly, we’ve had amazing volunteers. Our volunteers are one of the main reasons we’ve been able to do so much with so little monetary funding.”

Basham estimates their total funding has been about $1.3 million.

“A lot of people see that as a big number,” Basham said. “For a project this size and the years of service that that money can work and the thousands and thousands of people that can serve—it’s a drop in the bucket.”

For reference, in May, Gov. Andy Beshear dispersed more than $21 million for recovery in Mayfield alone to the city of Mayfield, Mayfield Electric and Water, the Graves County Hickory and Industrial Park and three nonprofit groups, WKMS reported. The Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund has raised more than $52 million altogether.

Lone Oak First Baptist in Paducah donated all the appliances and materials for them to finish out one of the tiny houses they use for housing. They have four tiny houses in total. Basham said the houses are on the last stages of electric hookup now; they have an electrician ready but not the funds necessary to pay them.

The interim housing is important because other organizations, like Samaritan’s Purse and Homes and Hopes, need people transitioned out of the houses so they can keep their time schedules. 

Camp Graves wants to be able to help these organizations maintain their timelines.

“And it’s frustrating for me because I get the phone calls with people crying, and I get the phone calls with the person saying, ‘Well, they’re going to have to postpone my house being fixed,’” Basham said. “Those are the people I have to talk to. And I have to tell them ‘no,’ and I have to turn them down, and I have to say it was gonna be a little while.”

Interim housing also serves those who need help during the transition period to permanent housing.

“We still have the primary housing need for direct tornado victims, and then second, the tornado victims that are now in the repair and rebuild process,” Basham said. “So that interim housing is very important because all these organizations focus on permanent housing. …That in between is the gray area that Camp Graves sheds light on.”

Veteran and Hispanic-focused projects

Camp Sanctuary on Broadway will work as a primarily Hispanic organization to help find families who need help, regardless of documentation status. They want to encourage them to get full legal citizenship and will help them find the legal services to do so.

Though Sanctuary is not open yet, they have already housed some Hispanic families.

“Because we want them to stay a part of our community,” Basham said. “They’re vital. Those families are vital. With the tornado, that demographic was very underserved because when you can’t show an ID to FEMA or to the Red Cross, you don’t get services.” 

Sanctuary will be a “revolving door” for these families. They will have 12-18 months, which helps them establish help with their English language skills, which in turn helps with jobs, transportation, school, etc. It will also help them with legal services and make sure they get the documentation they need to become homeowners or renters.

Seavers said he’s excited for them to organize this initiative further—specifically the budgeting class because anybody will be welcome to attend. 

“We’ve got to teach these people how to handle the money that they’re being helped with,” Seavers said. “I would like to see more education and housing come back…and the businesses. We need the businesses to come back. We need everything.”

Camp Rendezvous on 510 S. 6th St. will help homeless veterans.

“We all love our veterans,” Basham said. “We need them. They served us. Now, it’s time to serve them.” 

Rendezvous will house eight to nine male veteran residents. Basham said because they can’t separate men and women with the facilities they have, it’ll be open to only men. They will have 12-18 months in this facility in order to transition back into the community.

Basham said this time frame was selected to keep in mind the mental health or substance abuse issues some of them may be going through. Healing and recovery can take several months—and Camp Graves wants to accommodate that need before helping them take the next steps.

That facility will have a group therapy room for therapists and spiritual leaders to lead discussion and an individual therapy room, among other resources.

At this location, they also hope to build a workshop for the veterans to work on site. While doing this, they encourage them to find permanent work outside of the facility. That way, they are eventually able to leave and support themselves independently.

For more information, visit campgraves.org or contact campgravesky@gmail.com.