Growing up in Black Mountain, Tinley Clark never envisioned herself attending Montreat College. After all, the small college up the cove was only five minutes from home. However, after visiting campus and learning she could continue playing softball, she embraced the opportunity to stay close to family.
Then, only one month into her college experience, Hurricane Helene swept through the Carolina mountains. The day before the storm, Clark was having lunch with some of her softball teammates when they were notified that weekend practices had been canceled as a precaution for severe weather. That evening, they wrapped up practice by lifting their pitching machine onto a couch in their facility just in case some rain leaked through the roof.
“Nobody really expected the extent of what it was going to do because we thought we were in for a long, fun weekend without practice,” Clark recalled.
Instead, Hurricane Helene unleashed her fury on the mountains and southern foothills, dumping torrents of water that transformed peaceful streams into raging rivers that roared through campus and poured into Black Mountain.
“Everybody went to bed Thursday night, and it wasn’t too bad,” she said. “They woke up the next morning, and everybody started looking at what happened. By that point, the river was completely running through the bottom half of the gym, bridges had collapsed, and Lake Susan was already over its banks running on the road. The water was running about a mile down the road and almost took out the police station half a mile down the road in Montreat.”
For Clark, a first-year Exercise Science student at Montreat College, the disaster struck painfully close to home, threatening the livelihood her father had built over the past 15 years.
Tinley’s father owns Eye for Detail, a car detailing business in nearby Swannanoa. Four years ago, he relocated the business to a building along the banks of the Swannanoa River. In the early morning hours of Friday, September 27, the river surged over its banks and submerged his shop, sweeping away years of hard work.
“It’s hard seeing everything my dad has worked for taken away within a matter of hours overnight,” Clark reflected. “It felt surreal to us. There was no way this kind of devastation could come from a hurricane that hit all the way in Florida and still do the damage here that it did.”
While the damage to the building was severe, the business also housed many irreplaceable belongings.
“My grandfather was an Army veteran, and some of his things were in the shop and were lost, so that has been hard,” she said. “It was just so unexpected.”
Thankfully, Clark’s home in Black Mountain was spared from major damage. A backyard creek rose as far as the foundation, taking out a portion of their back porch. Following the closure of campus, Tinley was able to host eight of her teammates at her home, grateful for their companionship.
“I think it helped me a lot having that support system around me as my family and I were trying to comprehend what had just happened,” she said. “The hardest part for a lot of the people, especially the out-of-state kids, was they had no way to contact their families and say that they were okay.”
In the days that followed, Tinley and her family counted their blessings, thankful their losses were material and not the lives of loved ones. Still, the challenges were daunting. Some of her high school friends lost their homes entirely, and while their home was safe and her dad’s business was still standing, they now faced the burden of covering all the repairs on their own. Despite having insurance, they discovered the building that housed the family’s business wasn’t covered due to its location in a floodplain. FEMA assistance also wasn’t available for the same reason.
“It’s taken a lot of thought and prayers just trying to wrap my head around it, even a month out. It feels somewhat like a dream every day,” she said. “Every time you drive, you feel like you’re driving through a dream because the day before the hurricane hit, everything was fine. It was sunny. Then, it starts raining a little bit and all of a sudden, you wake up the next morning and it honestly looks like the day after an atomic bomb hit some of the areas around here.”
Less than a month after the storm hit, Montreat College was able to reopen campus and resume in-person classes on October 24. Although Clark felt the return felt sudden, she was blessed by the supportive community at Montreat College.
“Now that we’re back, I feel a lot better,” she said. “The professors have been very understanding, which is one of the great things about this school. While we were doing online school, I had no Internet at my house, so I had to complete work once I got back here. The professors kept encouraging us and provided the resources we needed.”
Montreat College’s support didn’t stop there. As Tinley’s family began the challenging task of rebuilding her father’s business, the college stepped forward with tangible assistance. A community benevolence fund established for Montreat families in crisis was able to provide essential aid, helping Tinley’s family cover critical expenses in the wake of the hurricane.
“It’s meant a lot because even though they may not know my family personally, there are people willing to help,” expressed Clark. “It’s helping out a lot just trying to get little things back for my dad to hopefully be able to reopen in the near future.”
As Tinley returns to campus, she knows more than ever that Montreat College will always be there to support her. Now, she’s ready to chase her dream of becoming an elementary physical education teacher with a renewed determination and a broadened perspective.
“For our community though, it’s banded us together,” she said. “Curveballs are thrown at you every day, but life is too short to hold grudges. I need to live every day like it’s my last because you really never know what can happen.”