By Jesse Wright

jesse.wright@panews.com

 

Rick Hackney did not know what he was getting himself into when he drove to Port Arthur.

But, as a member of the Tuscon-based Veterans on Patrol, a group of veterans who help others when they can, he got word that Port Arthur needed help after the devastating floods of Tropical Storm Harvey.

So, to Port Arthur he went.

“My wife and I just looked at each other and said, ‘OK, we’re going to do this,’” he said.

Hackney and his wife set out in their Jeep Cherokee and other friends followed in their cars.

“We grabbed a bunch of guys and hauled butt down there,” he said.

But Hackney ran into trouble.

As floodwaters rose in late August, his Jeep began acting up and, somewhere near Devers on Highway 90, his transmission gave out.

And, all at once, he himself was in need of help.

Well, no matter, Hackney thought. He left it, dead, at a gas station and went with the other Veterans on Patrol into Port Arthur where he threw himself into work.

“We set up at the front doors of the mall and started handing out supplies,” he said. “We had people from all over the country coming. The guy who heads up Veterans on Patrol, he knows people everywhere.”

Hackney could not recall exactly what day he came in, but he said it was before federal agents got it, when there was a lot of need and not a lot of help.

“It was just amazing,” he said. “People were on the line and we moved the line from the doors of the mall to the front parking lot. … Our supply line was at least a quarter of a mile long.”

Hackney said they served everyone—including the rescuers.

“It turned into a big operation,” he said. “We had over 100 boats in the parking lot at one point.”

Hackney spent days at the mall.

“At the mall we had nothing to sleep on or anything,” he said.

The first nights, he and his wife grabbed some blankets off the donation pile and slept in the mall’s foyer. The mall itself was locked up.

“There was a girl on the Internet from Indiana and she heard about Veterans on Patrol in Port Arthur and her sister lived in Beaumont and so she called her sister and her sister picked us up, two or three at a time, and she’d take us to her house for showers and then she’d take us to her mom’s house for Cajun food and then take us back on the line.”

Hackney did this for the better part of a week. It was a long, exhausting process and in the downtime, Hackney said his mind would reel back to his dead Jeep.

He was in Port Arthur to help, but how would he get home? The city was shut down; nothing was open.

And he had to find a mechanic.

“I was bummed out about the Jeep and I was running the supply line and a girl came up and gave me a hug and she said what’s wrong and I said I was thinking about the Jeep that had broken down 80 miles away,” he said.

Hackney doesn’t know who she was, but the woman called her husband and he called somebody and by the next morning his Jeep was in the Mall’s parking lot.

Of course, that still didn’t fix the dead Jeep, but at least it wasn’t in Devers.

Then someone suggested Johnny Greenwood.

Greenwood is the owner of Greenwood’s Garage in Groves and through the storm and the flooding, he never closed his doors.

Greenwood established that indeed the transmission was dead. However, in the middle of a flood, finding a new or used transmission might be difficult.

Hackney said he was ready to give up.

“I was ready to leave the Jeep there and go home. I was gonna hand him the title and go home,” he said.

But Greenwood wouldn’t have it. Greenwood and seven others had been working around the clock with his mechanics to keep first responders running and he wasn’t about to say no to another one in need.

“We never closed the doors,” Greenwood said. “We kept the doors open round the clock. We helped service the first responders. … There was four inches of water through here but we were changing oils and replacing fluids. If we weren’t changing fluids, then we were out in boats rescuing people.”

At its worst, Greenwood said water got up to 14 inches at his shop, but he and his employees and friends kept on working.

During the crisis, Greenwood worked for free.

He said so long as the person brought the replacement part, he and his employees would hive their labor for free.

“In the last couple of years we’ve been on the news twice and we’ve been branded the ‘pay it forward shop,’” he explained. “It’s a Christian based business. God gave me a servant’s heart and he’s blessed my hands.”

But still, he said he’d never been through a flood. But never mind that. He said he never thought of leaving or closing.

“My aunt works for FEMA and we don’t talk at all, but when she calls me up and says I need you to get out of here, she really means it,” Greenwood said. “But I lied to her and I stayed. Something in my spirit said I needed to stay.”

Greenwood said he isn’t the only mechanic who didn’t close during the storm

“Tony Green with Mid County Off Road in Nederland is the other automotive shop,” Greenwood said. “We shared a lot of workload through Harvey. If I couldn’t do it here, we sent them there.”
Hackney happened to wind up at Greenwood’s place.

Greenwood said he tried for days to get ahold of a Jeep transmission, but he had no luck.

“For a couple of days we tried real hard to find a transmission, because he wanted to go home and then we wanted someone to donate some transportation because he was ready to go home.”

But there was nothing. So, he turned to his business partner, Jeremy Patterson.

“(He) said, ‘I ain’t never been to Arizona before,’ so he called his wife and said, ‘Mind if I borrow the minivan to carry this family back home?’ and she said, ‘I don’t care.’”

It was a 22-hour drive to Tucson and Patterson drove it, the whole way through, without stopping and without help from any other drivers.

“I don’t sleep,” Patterson said, straight-faced.

He added he also doesn’t need coffee.

Patterson also wouldn’t accept payment for gas.

“He and I travel all over the U.S. together and he’s not lying,” said Greenwood. “He doesn’t sleep.”

But Hackney said Patterson’s insomnia is not the most impressive thing he saw in Texas.

No, that would be the generosity he saw from everyone.

“If everybody does a little, then nobody has to do a lot,” Hackney explained.

And, in Texas, he discovered that everyone seemed willing to do something—even if it meant driving to Arizona to help out a stranger.

“If anybody ever talks bad about anyone in Texas, I am going to throat punch them,” he said.

Greenwood said he still has no found a new or used transmission for Hackney’s vehicle. Once he does, he plans to send the vehicle—for free—back to Arizona and back to Hackney.

If anyone would like to donate a transmission, contact Greenwood at 409-332-8051.