Sunday, December 02, 2007
Solace in service
A group honored a Virginia Tech friend by volunteering to mend houses in Appalachia.
ROSE HILL — As Alyssa Katz made her way down the side of the tin roof, electric drill in hand, she stopped every few seconds to attach another section of aluminum to the log cabin home.
The Virginia Tech sophomore, who had no previous construction experience, was focused on the task at hand. A Jewish political science major from Northern Virginia, she didn’t stop to consider the circumstances that had drawn her to the southwestern corner of the state as a volunteer for a Christian service organization.
Those thoughts would come later.
Katz was one of about 40 Tech students who spent the weekend before Thanksgiving fixing houses in Lee County as part of the Appalachia Service Project , an organization that repairs homes of low-income people in rural Appalachia.
The trip was organized by Bryan and Renee Cloyd in memory of their daughter Austin, a Tech freshman who was killed April 16. The Cloyds have volunteered on several ASP trips with their daughter in the past. This time, in her stead were dozens of Tech students, many of whom knew the tall, red-headed international studies student.
She was Katz’s best friend.
They met in September 2006 in the Cassell Coliseum parking lot, sharing a car ride to a Model United Nations conference at Georgetown University with other students in Tech’s International Relations Organization . The two immediately hit it off, sharing a passion for humanitarian causes such as stopping the genocide in Darfur and a love of Justin Timberlake’s music.
Renee Cloyd shared a bunk with Katz and exchanged frequent hugs with her daughter’s friends over the weekend. The Cloyds knew some of them before April, but since then they have grown closer, exchanging e-mails over the summer and sharing the occasional meal.
Quick to laugh and joke with the students, but also enough of an authority figure to quiet a room of chatty young men and women with a “shh,” Renee Cloyd was glad to see so many of her daughter’s friends come out to do something she enjoyed so much. But she made a conscious attempt to focus on the service and bonding aspect of the trip, not the tragedy.
A cardboard box overflowing with maroon wrist bands with orange writing that read “ASP 2007 In Memory of Austin Cloyd” sat on a table in the ASP dining area. They weren’t handed out to volunteers or even mentioned to the group as a whole. But they were available to anyone who asked about them.
Discussions about Austin Cloyd and Daniel Perez , another April 16 victim and IRO member, were mostly limited to private conversations.
Katz thought the right balance was struck between remembering friends who were lost and enjoying the experience.
“I think that’s good for Renee and Bryan, not to be constantly reminded of it but still know, in the back of their heads, that the whole purpose of this is for Austin,” she said on the second night of the trip.
The trip, from Thursday night to Sunday morning, resembled summer camp, with chores for the volunteers, make-your-own-sundae time, shared bathrooms and bunk beds . Volunteers worked on four homes needing repairs ranging from roof construction to foundation digging. Working, laughing and bonding with one another and the residents whose homes they were repairing, the students enjoyed a mostly upbeat weekend.
Katz spent her lunch breaks at the cabin posing for photos with friends, making fun of her construction attire — a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants over jeans — and getting to know Tripod, a three-legged goat who was fond of banana peels. Back at the ASP center, students occupied themselves by playing cards or charades. They also listened to speakers each night.
The Saturday night speaker was Scott Sedam , president of TrueNorth Development , a nationwide home-building consulting and training firm. He discussed his struggles with kidney failure and a subsequent transplant. Now healthy, he spoke at length about the lessons he learned from the ordeal.
Katz was sitting next to Sedam as he spoke, looking at the floor with her hand on her head, thinking about her friend.
After his speech, Sedam asked the audience to break into small groups to discuss whether he would go back and change anything about the experience that caused him so much pain and suffering.
It didn’t take long for Renee Cloyd to make the connection. The mother who lost her daughter just seven months ago fought back tears as she explained to her group the obvious differences between Sedam’s ordeal and her own.
“This isn’t something that happened to me,” she said. “Of course I’d choose to not have this happen.”
The tears she had been fighting came through. Sitting next to Cloyd in the circle, Katz joined her in a teary-eyed hug that soon became a group hug. A couple of men in the group looked on, tears in their eyes, as the women held one another and cried.
“We love you guys, too,” Renee Cloyd said, managing a smile as she looked up to see them. The tears evaporated with Cloyd’s laughter at her own observation.
Other groups experienced a range of emotions during the exercise as they shared thoughts and feelings they had been keeping to themselves during the weekend.
Tech junior Megan Mirmelstein said her group’s tears turned to laughter when they reflected on what Perez and Austin Cloyd would do if they saw them all sitting in circles, crying over them. Both were known for their sense of humor and upbeat personalities.
“They wouldn’t want us to be upset, they’d want us to be happy,” she said. “We always did so many fun things together; they were never down or sad.”
Mirmelstein said she plans on doing more service projects and recommends them to anyone trying to cope with tragedy. That sentiment was echoed by other students as they said their good byes Sunday and posed for photos they planned to post online.
They were the second ASP volunteer group the Cloyds organized in November, the first coming down one week earlier. They’ll lead more trips in the spring, and Bryan Cloyd, an accounting professor at Tech, will teach an honors course next semester on service that will include a trip to volunteer with ASP. One student asked him about the work required for it because she was hoping to add it to her already full course load.
While the students clearly enjoyed one another’s company, they had a hard time explaining what it was about volunteering that made them feel better.
“I just felt so great after this weekend that I really want to keep doing it,” sophomore Molly Pearl said. “Maybe if I keep doing it, I’ll learn why.”
Late Saturday night, Bryan Cloyd explained that Sedam’s speech wasn’t designed to get people thinking if they would change what had happened if they could — that’s a given. His real point was to emphasize that positive things can come out of terrible ordeals.
“These tragedies are transformational experiences for people,” he said. “They can be transformed in a positive way, they can be transformed in a negative way. One of our goals here was to try to help students learn to transform in a positive way. To learn to react to a tragedy in a way that moves them forward.”
He summed up what the trip and the students’ presence meant to him when he spoke to the group Saturday night, after Sedam’s speech. It was the Cloyd s’ 23rd wedding anniversary.
“That makes this a day a special time and it makes it a hard time,” he said. “I’m very, very thankful that we can share this one with you. Thanks for being a part of our family this weekend.”
The Virginia Tech sophomore, who had no previous construction experience, was focused on the task at hand. A Jewish political science major from Northern Virginia, she didn’t stop to consider the circumstances that had drawn her to the southwestern corner of the state as a volunteer for a Christian service organization.
Those thoughts would come later.
Katz was one of about 40 Tech students who spent the weekend before Thanksgiving fixing houses in Lee County as part of the Appalachia Service Project , an organization that repairs homes of low-income people in rural Appalachia.
The trip was organized by Bryan and Renee Cloyd in memory of their daughter Austin, a Tech freshman who was killed April 16. The Cloyds have volunteered on several ASP trips with their daughter in the past. This time, in her stead were dozens of Tech students, many of whom knew the tall, red-headed international studies student.
She was Katz’s best friend.
They met in September 2006 in the Cassell Coliseum parking lot, sharing a car ride to a Model United Nations conference at Georgetown University with other students in Tech’s International Relations Organization . The two immediately hit it off, sharing a passion for humanitarian causes such as stopping the genocide in Darfur and a love of Justin Timberlake’s music.
Renee Cloyd shared a bunk with Katz and exchanged frequent hugs with her daughter’s friends over the weekend. The Cloyds knew some of them before April, but since then they have grown closer, exchanging e-mails over the summer and sharing the occasional meal.
Quick to laugh and joke with the students, but also enough of an authority figure to quiet a room of chatty young men and women with a “shh,” Renee Cloyd was glad to see so many of her daughter’s friends come out to do something she enjoyed so much. But she made a conscious attempt to focus on the service and bonding aspect of the trip, not the tragedy.
A cardboard box overflowing with maroon wrist bands with orange writing that read “ASP 2007 In Memory of Austin Cloyd” sat on a table in the ASP dining area. They weren’t handed out to volunteers or even mentioned to the group as a whole. But they were available to anyone who asked about them.
Discussions about Austin Cloyd and Daniel Perez , another April 16 victim and IRO member, were mostly limited to private conversations.
Katz thought the right balance was struck between remembering friends who were lost and enjoying the experience.
“I think that’s good for Renee and Bryan, not to be constantly reminded of it but still know, in the back of their heads, that the whole purpose of this is for Austin,” she said on the second night of the trip.
The trip, from Thursday night to Sunday morning, resembled summer camp, with chores for the volunteers, make-your-own-sundae time, shared bathrooms and bunk beds . Volunteers worked on four homes needing repairs ranging from roof construction to foundation digging. Working, laughing and bonding with one another and the residents whose homes they were repairing, the students enjoyed a mostly upbeat weekend.
Katz spent her lunch breaks at the cabin posing for photos with friends, making fun of her construction attire — a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants over jeans — and getting to know Tripod, a three-legged goat who was fond of banana peels. Back at the ASP center, students occupied themselves by playing cards or charades. They also listened to speakers each night.
The Saturday night speaker was Scott Sedam , president of TrueNorth Development , a nationwide home-building consulting and training firm. He discussed his struggles with kidney failure and a subsequent transplant. Now healthy, he spoke at length about the lessons he learned from the ordeal.
Katz was sitting next to Sedam as he spoke, looking at the floor with her hand on her head, thinking about her friend.
After his speech, Sedam asked the audience to break into small groups to discuss whether he would go back and change anything about the experience that caused him so much pain and suffering.
It didn’t take long for Renee Cloyd to make the connection. The mother who lost her daughter just seven months ago fought back tears as she explained to her group the obvious differences between Sedam’s ordeal and her own.
“This isn’t something that happened to me,” she said. “Of course I’d choose to not have this happen.”
The tears she had been fighting came through. Sitting next to Cloyd in the circle, Katz joined her in a teary-eyed hug that soon became a group hug. A couple of men in the group looked on, tears in their eyes, as the women held one another and cried.
“We love you guys, too,” Renee Cloyd said, managing a smile as she looked up to see them. The tears evaporated with Cloyd’s laughter at her own observation.
Other groups experienced a range of emotions during the exercise as they shared thoughts and feelings they had been keeping to themselves during the weekend.
Tech junior Megan Mirmelstein said her group’s tears turned to laughter when they reflected on what Perez and Austin Cloyd would do if they saw them all sitting in circles, crying over them. Both were known for their sense of humor and upbeat personalities.
“They wouldn’t want us to be upset, they’d want us to be happy,” she said. “We always did so many fun things together; they were never down or sad.”
Mirmelstein said she plans on doing more service projects and recommends them to anyone trying to cope with tragedy. That sentiment was echoed by other students as they said their good byes Sunday and posed for photos they planned to post online.
They were the second ASP volunteer group the Cloyds organized in November, the first coming down one week earlier. They’ll lead more trips in the spring, and Bryan Cloyd, an accounting professor at Tech, will teach an honors course next semester on service that will include a trip to volunteer with ASP. One student asked him about the work required for it because she was hoping to add it to her already full course load.
While the students clearly enjoyed one another’s company, they had a hard time explaining what it was about volunteering that made them feel better.
“I just felt so great after this weekend that I really want to keep doing it,” sophomore Molly Pearl said. “Maybe if I keep doing it, I’ll learn why.”
Late Saturday night, Bryan Cloyd explained that Sedam’s speech wasn’t designed to get people thinking if they would change what had happened if they could — that’s a given. His real point was to emphasize that positive things can come out of terrible ordeals.
“These tragedies are transformational experiences for people,” he said. “They can be transformed in a positive way, they can be transformed in a negative way. One of our goals here was to try to help students learn to transform in a positive way. To learn to react to a tragedy in a way that moves them forward.”
He summed up what the trip and the students’ presence meant to him when he spoke to the group Saturday night, after Sedam’s speech. It was the Cloyd s’ 23rd wedding anniversary.
“That makes this a day a special time and it makes it a hard time,” he said. “I’m very, very thankful that we can share this one with you. Thanks for being a part of our family this weekend.”
