Cornell opens doors to Coe, Red Cross and businesses
June 18, 2008 · Jake Krob

With its rich history of service, Cornell College opened its campus to others as floodwaters engulfed Eastern Iowa.

It's helped Coe College in Cedar Rapids, the Red Cross, an area social service agency and businesses.

Dee Ann Rexroat, director of communications for Cornell, said the the calls for help started coming in as Cedar Rapids flooding reached record levels.

Coe and Cornell, friendly rivals in Eastern Iowa, often help one another. Thursday, June 12, students on campus for the summer, when college isn't in session, were alerted to a noon meeting. Amy Gray, a sophomore from Portland, Ore., said students who didn't have a place to go were brought to Cornell on a bus.

Originally, there were 34 brought to Mount Vernon to stay in a dorm on campus. By Friday, 15 remained. Eleven remained Sunday. The following day, they were allowed to return to campus in Cedar Rapids.

Students said they're most worried about their on- and off-campus jobs. Wesley Beckwith, a junior from Colorado, works for Fed Ex as well as Sodexho at Cornell. Gray is working on campus this summer, and hopes the flood allows her to make enough money for a trip with friends to Canada in August.

"Right now, we're just hanging out," Gray said of their time at Cornell.

A Cornell dorm was also transformed into a shelter for Red Cross volunteers who started arriving Sunday. The college can house just over 120 volunteers.

Sue Byrd, a shelter director from Alabama, started volunteering with the Red Cross as an 11-year-old living with her mom in a country hospital in Georgia during WWII. She took Red Cross classes to help out and has been a volunteer ever since.

She flew to Minneapolis Friday, rented a car there and drove to Cedar Falls for volunteer processing. She landed in Mount Vernon to "staff the staff shelter."

The mission at Cornell is to serve "the staff that's working the disaster shelters."

She explained that most Red Cross operations consist of three, eight-hour shifts each day. The staff shelter at Cornell is the home to volunteers when they aren't helping with relief efforts. Volunteers at the staff shelter help them at their new place of residence.

Before Sunday night ended, about 50 volunteers had arrived to stay here.

Another site at Cornell is host to about 60 women and children from an Eastern Iowa social service agency. Efforts are underway locally to gather donations for the mothers and their children (see Page A2).

Cornell has also become home to displaced businesses and businesses coming to Eastern Iowa to help with the recovery efforts.

The law firm Shuttleworth & Ingersoll, located in the U.S. Bank building on Third Street Southeast in Cedar Rapids, was displaced due to the severe flooding in that city. Rexroat said about 20 staff members from the firm have set up a satellite office on the Cornell campus.

Servicemaster, a company that specializes in cleanup, is also at Cornell, renting a hall. Thirty-two employees arrived Sunday night; more than 130 are expected in total this week.

A hard timeline hasn't been set for how long Cornell's new residents can stay. The first block of the 2008-09 school year begins Sept. 1, with new student orientation beginning the week before and athletes arriving early as well.