VOLUNTEER STATE BAPTISTS COME TO RESCUE OF LOCAL FLOOD VICTIMS

For some of the 34 volunteers scrambling about the First Baptist Church parking lot, the day began at 4:30 a.m. They might get to fall back into their cots by 10 p.m.

In between, they will have prepared more than 2,500 hot meals that Red Cross workers will hustle out to far-flung flood victims and relief workers in an operation that combines twice-a-day production-line timing with folksy amiability.

Most of the volunteers are Tennesseans who belong to a Southern Baptist disaster relief organization that jumps every time one strikes. Some are veterans of Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo. Others are green, but they don't remain that way long.

Everybody quickly learns how to do most all the jobs, although some might be restricted by strength or medical conditions. Some days they cook or clean. Others they accompany the Red Cross Emergency Relief Vehicles that deliver the food.

The military-style operation is organized into two long tents containing food preparation tables, 10 burners with double boilers, huge tilting skillets, dishing washing sinks and a large "hog cooker" capable even of baking bread or cakes.

The disaster workers also have devised an ingenious steam-cleaning operation for the Cambros the formed-plastic containers that will keep the food hot on the road that catches leftover food in a screen positioned at the bottom of a livestock trough.

Two trailers laden with food and equipment accompany the disaster team, along with a command post Winnebago.

Also parked on the lot are refrigerated trailers that either have been rented or donated. All the food has been provided by the American Red Cross.

Curtis Fowler, who is the coordinator of the operation, is up way before sunrise "just trying to stay on top of it." Fowler and his wife Elizabeth work as a team.

A retired chemical company employee who is coordinating his fifth disaster relief effort, Fowler was last at the Hurricane Andrew aftermath. He and Elizabeth spent eight weeks feeding people in Miami and sleeping four to a tent. "If it came a rain we could take a shower without getting out of bed," he said.

He compared the cot and dormitory-style accommodations at the First Baptist Church to "staying at the Holiday Inn."

Despite the arduousness of disaster relief volunteering, Fowler said 1,200 Tennesseans are on the organization's ready list. "There are people waiting to come," he said.

He expects the number of meals served to increase as the river waters begin to recede and the massive job of cleaning up the damage begins. The operation's capability is about 25,000 meals per day.

Most of the volunteers come only for four days or so and then are rotated back home. "About four days is all you can take," said Gilbert Ray, a machinist from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who is a veteran of many disasters.

After Hurricane Andrew, he and other volunteers lived in a building without a roof. "It rained every day," he recalled.

Ray worked as a disaster volunteer with his wife until she died two years ago. "She enjoyed this. This was going to be our retirement thing," he said.

He continues the work because "this is what she wanted."

Mary Kelly of Clinton, Tenn., is attending her first disaster. "I don't sleep well," she admits, her eyes tearing.

She said seeing the flood stories on the evening news "is like watching a movie. Everybody should come and look at it."

Kelly thinks it matters that the flood victims know that others care about them.

"I have arthritis so I can't fill sandbags, but I can number food cartons or talk to them or pray for them."

Sunny Ray Mattingly is one of the non-Tennessee, non-Baptist volunteers. She lives only four blocks away from the church, and wandered over one day to see if there was something she could do. There was.

Mattingly, a 19-year-old German and Spanish education student at Southeast Missouri State University, works about four to six hours a day getting the meals ready and washing out the Cambros. That's in addition to going to class and a part-time job.

She says, "These people are probably the nicest people I've ever met."

Mattingly just wanted to help, and in the best way possible.

"I answered the telephone at the Red Cross, and I went and sandbagged. But the levees keep breaking anyway," she said.

"Here I feel like I'm getting things done."

Teams from the Baptist volunteers also have helped with sandbagging, the evacuation of families in the Red Star District, and the moving of pews and pianos from a church in Ware, Ill.

The volunteers will return to Tennessee with stories of the Flood of '93. Maybe the one about two 20-year-olds who just drove in exhausted from South Carolina with a truckload of food. They downed a cola and a cinnamon roll and immediately lit out for a sandbagging detail.

Or the little girl who brought the Baptist volunteers the proceeds from her weekend lemonade stand. She got lots of hugs for her trouble.

"You go to help somebody, but when you come back you feel lifted up," Gilbert Ray said.

By Sept. 1, the volunteers hope to be able to shut down the feeding operation. After all, Fowler points out, it's almost hurricane season.

Thursday: The Red Cross delivers.