After homes were destroyed in the Tropical Storm Harvey flooding, Howell Furniture and some of their partners stepped up to help put back together a few of those homes.

In addition to passing out the usual supplies—water, cleaning gear and the like—the area furniture store donated numerous twin mattresses and pieces of furniture to the local United Way offices.

Shawn Hanley, a partner at Howell, said store employees saw how urgently people wanted to get their homes put back together in the immediate aftermath of Harvey.

“We opened our Beaumont store first with no power and no water,” Hanley said. They opened despite those things because people needed to replace their things.

At the same time, their vendors began calling.

“Our vendors started calling on us to check on us to see how we were from all over the country,” she said. “They were calling, asking how they could help. They kind of took over on our behalf.”

One of those calls was from Furniture First, a national buying group. They called Hanley to let her know they would be sending an 18-wheeler full of twin mattresses to give away.

“Other vendors called,” she said. “A rug dealer called and said ‘we’re sending a huge truck filled with water, cleanings supplies and toiletry items and baby foods and pet foods and all kinds of stuff.’ We gave out almost 3,000 cases of water here at the store.”

Howell has stores in Beaumont and Nederland, but employees went to Vidor and Port Arthur to hand out cleaning supplies.

Then, Hanley said, Vaught-Bassett called and said a semi-truck filled with furniture is on the way to give away.

“We were blown away,” Hanley said.

Hanley said the store could not coordinate a big giveaway, so instead they gave the items to the United Way offices in North Jefferson County, Mid and South Jefferson County and Orange County.

The United Way offices handled all the applications and the mattresses and furniture were given away weeks ago.

Nevertheless, Howell continues to support people in need.

This week Hanley said the furniture store made a $10,000 cash donation to the American Cancer Society.

“It’s earmarked to the Hurricane Harvey Fund, to go to people who live here who were affected by the hurricanes and who are undergoing cancer treatment,” Hanley said.

Hanley said she is proudest of her employees.

“I’m proud of our employees,” she said. “They were amazing through this. They were up here helping us clean up and we had 10 employees who lost everything and they were up here helping us get up and going again.”

Finally, Hanley hopes people will remember to buy local products through the recovery phase.

“Buy local and help our community rebuild,” she said. “If you’re not buying local from these businesses, then you’re not helping people rebuild.”