Red Cross volunteer thrives on helping victims of disasters

Kris Hill

Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

Jerry Meardy says the real heroes of disasters are not the people who help communities get through them, but the people who survive them.

Meardy is a Red Cross volunteer trained to help after a disaster strikes. He has been all over the United States and to Puerto Rico helping victims of tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters.

He recently returned from Little Rock, Ark., where he spent two weeks helping people cope with the effects of three severe ice storms in December.

More than 200,000 residents of the Little Rock area lost electricity after power lines heavy with ice snapped throughout the area. The bitter cold forced many to seek temporary shelter.

"They were in a bad way," Meardy said.

His area of expertise is called mass care. His volunteer work involves organizing and distributing food to and finding shelter for victims.

Meardy was called to Little Rock because he is the only Las Vegas Red Cross volunteer trained for the situation.

He has been volunteering at major disasters for the Red Cross since 1995.

After his first six months of retirement, which consisted of playing golf every day until it got too hot in July, he decided to find something else to do.

He started going to training classes that summer, and in December 1995 he went on his first trip: Seattle and its suburbs were experiencing the worst flooding in years.

"Dead cows were floating down the river north of Seattle," Meardy said.

Since then, Meardy has gone on anywhere from five to nine trips a year as a disaster volunteer. He has spent as little as two weeks and as much as two months away from Las Vegas.

He said his younger friends question his sanity and his motivation to volunteer.

There's no money, no fun and lots of hard work involved, he said. But it gives him that warm and fuzzy feeling and it keeps him young.

"I think everyone dreams of being Sir Galahad and riding in on a white charger," Meardy said.

He also discovered how much helping victims affected him. While on his first trip he found himself crying after a hard day helping flood victims.

Meardy reasoned that if volunteering could jangle his emotions, then maybe it was a good way to spend his time.

"It's hard to put into words what I get out of it," he said.

He encourages others to get involved with the Red Cross because he has had such positive experiences with the organization and volunteering.

The training requires at least two classes of three to four hours apiece. They are offered monthly.

In addition, a disaster volunteer like him must make at least a three-week commitment, Meardy said. The 66-year-old understands that younger people have to work and can't or won't take three weeks off to volunteer.

But he knows that there are retired people in Las Vegas who are active and capable of this kind of volunteer work. They just need to get involved.

There are many functions at the Red Cross and there is one appropriate for every individual, he said.