Larry O’Neal didn’t ask for any help; he didn’t have to. When his home was destroyed on April 27, his employer, the Kappa Alpha fraternity, came to his rescue, both financially and physically.
After being let off work early that afternoon, he drove to his trailer home in Crescent Ridge and turned on the TV. He followed the advice of the man on the screen and took his family to the storm shelter behind the trailer. There, locked in fiberglass, he listened to the storm pass over and destroy his home, his truck and his entire way of life. A few minutes after what sounded like a train had passed, he rose out of the shelter to find nothing.
“I stepped out and could see a mile away,” O’Neal said. “There was nothing there anymore.”
He didn’t stop and take time to mourn the loss of his home; he did what so many others that were affected by the tornado did that day: he went looking for his friend.
Sal Merritt, a man who lived down the road from O’Neal, was lying beneath the rubble of his two-story home when O’Neal arrived. A few other men and O’Neal helped get him free from the debris. Coming out without a scratch and only a missing shoe, Merritt was grateful for his rescue.
“I was really in a daze after all that, and Larry helped me through it and got me up,” Merritt said.
O’Neal, 51, was left with nothing but an old DVD of his niece’s wedding that he found in the rubble and the blocks that once held up his home. He, like many in the community, had to start over. He found immediate shelter for him and his wheelchair-bound son, Antwone, at the Belk Center and was able to borrow his other son’s truck to get to work, a day of which he never missed.
“I was bouncing around different friends’ houses and borrowing just about everything, but I wasn’t going to miss work,” O’Neal said.
The Monday after the storm, he was taken to West Alabama Bank by Kappa Alpha member Mark Smith. There he learned that a bank account had been set up in his name by the fraternity to help him through his time of need. But that wasn’t all. KA continued to support O’Neal by means of clothes, food and other goods from lawn mowers to mattresses. KA even supplied O’Neal with enough money to purchase a much-needed new truck.
“We all knew we needed to help him,” said Smith, KA’s executive secretary. “Larry is a friend and a father-figure to everybody in that house.”
Smith said O’Neal is someone people just enjoy being around, whether it’s at the pool table or on the basketball court. Members of KA think of him as family, and O’Neal certainly reciprocates the feeling.
“I was and am truly blessed,” O’Neal said. “KA has really been taking care of me.”
O’Neal hasn’t been selfish with his gifts. Much of the money and goods he has been given he has shared with family and friends in need.
“It was all given to me, so I thought that I should be giving to other people, too,” O’Neal said.
He believes his generosity is part of the reason he has been given more than he ever hoped.
Today, Larry O’Neal wears a bracelet that reads “Praise You through the storm,” drives a new truck and rents a room in his niece’s house. He is thankful for the help he has received and credits KA with helping rebuild his life.
“Whenever somebody asks me about KA, I point to that truck,” he said. “KA did that for me.”
