In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, coping with loss has been a part of the storm recovery for many people in the region. BPR’s Lilly Knoepp talked to reporter Holly Kays with The Assembly about a piece she reported on those who are still missing. The recent story focused on Lenny Widawski, a Yancey County musician who still has not been found.
Lilly Knoepp: Tell me more about Lenny Widawski. He's the subject of your story and one of the people who is still missing after Helene.
Holly Kays: It was really interesting doing this profile. It's a profile story in a lot of ways. But the subject of that profile is no longer with us and so you can't talk to him and you can only talk to the people who have known him throughout his life. So it was an honor to be able to learn about him and to be able to tell his story. You could tell that the folks who knew Lenny, really loved him, really cared about him and that he was a good part of their lives. His music was a big part of the story. He was an accomplished violinist and had had a whole career, entertaining on cruise ships and then touring with his musical partner, prior to more permanently staying in Yancey County and playing more local shows. Friends and family described him as just a very loyal caring person. Also just very intelligent, kind of a perfectionist and committed to mastering whatever it is that he set his mind to - anything from playing pool to carpentering the puppets that he used for his ventriloquist act.
LK: What made you want to look into the missing after Helene for The Assembly?
HK: I have to credit the idea for the story to the photographer Alison Joyce, who brought the story to my editor’s attention and then to mine. She's been doing a lot of flood coverage as well. So through some other stories that she had been doing, she had started to hear about Lenny from folks in the community. ... I have been a reporter for over a decade and that's the way I know how to respond to a crisis: to try to tell the story of it and let people know you know what's going on in our region and how it's still impacting people all these months later.
LK: How many people are still missing after Hurricane Helene? What did you find while working on this story?
HK: I found that it is very hard to get a specific number. So in the immediate aftermath of the storm, there was like a state-level list that was being maintained but as that list winnowed down the responsibility for maintaining those lists and for investigating those cases really fell in the hands of the local law enforcement: city police departments, sheriff's offices, that kind of thing. So, in order to really get a number, you need to contact each one of those. And, of course that number fluctuates over time. It is rather small. At this point, I would say fewer than a dozen folks are still missing.
LK: What was it like going out with Charlie Pritchett known as “Chainsaw Chuck.” Who were they working with?
HK: They've all worked with different organizations at different times but they're now more of an independent crew. [They are] really committed to searching for the missing right now, really focusing their search on Lenny Widawski. They receive support from a variety of different organizations most notably Savage Freedom and Element Rescue.
So they're living on-site. They have a tent camp along the river that a property owner has allowed them to use. They've really been living in quite primitive conditions for these last few months. They've kind of left their lives behind to complete the search.
What we were doing was scoping out a pile of debris they hadn't been to before to just look for any objects that may have come from the direction of Lenny's house to gauge whether this might be a good place to dig at a future time.
It was really eye-opening. You know, I live just a little bit west of the worst of the damage and I haven't been trying to go specifically to see it without reason for being there. And so I hadn't really previously seen the kind of damage that there is in Yancey County and it was truly incredible. I say in the story it really was like climbing a mountain, just enormous piles of tree trunks and two-by-fours and crunched-up sides of buildings and then just people's personal effects strewn all through there. The bridges just completely taken it out, completely gone. You know the road that goes along the river that I was driving on a good bit of the time you had to be very careful because just sides of it or crumbled in. You have to be careful with your routes because a lot of roads are closed so Google Maps is trying to take you someplace that you actually can't go. The communities around the Toe River are definitely still in distress and I anticipate they will be for some time.
LK: Most of your piece focuses on Lenny as a musician but you found that most of his recordings were also lost in the flood. How did that feel from talking with friends and family?
HK: From talking to his longtime partner, Peggy Williams told me that that was just really a tragic thing for her because his music was such a big part of who he was and what their life together was about. And so to know that so much of that is gone in the flood. I think [that] is certainly devastating.
Kays found some of Widawski's music online. Here's one of his videos:
