A Welcome Rescue After the Storm
Bertha Bilbrey is a widow who has been living in Russellville, Kentucky, for sixty years.
“A lot of memories. It kinda makes you choke up a little sometimes,” says Bertha. “People don’t know what they’ve got till they lose it.”
She was taking shelter with her daughter when an EF-3 tornado went right over her house.
Bertha says, “It was scary. I didn’t know if we’d have a house when I come back. It was a mess. It just tore one side all up, broke the windows out, and it blowed the roof open; front part of it, and the rest of it had holes in it where water was coming through down the walls and everything. I didn’t think it could be fixed to be honest. I just thought it was, you know, it was gone.”
When an Operation Blessing team found out about Bertha, we knew we had to help her.
“The roof was in such a bad shape,” says Bertha. “They fixed that, and then they went to getting the flooring torn out. For somebody to come in and get it fixed for you, that is a miracle.”
From there, we replaced the windows, flooring and cabinets, and repaired the walls. Then, we brought in new furniture to replace what had been damaged. Bertha couldn’t believe the transformation.
Bertha says, “It just felt real good. They came in and fixed it and made it look new again. But it looks better than it did. You can’t tell that anything had happened to it, it looks so nice and everything. I didn’t think it ever could be fixed that way. It’s just unbelievable.”
She says she’s grateful to everyone who generously gave to Operation Blessing and made it all possible.
“They’re good, good people,” says Bertha. “I wanna thank everybody for doing what they did – fixing everything, and ya’ll have really done great wonders to this house.”
