By Susan Gallagher

Tom Shands is an honest-to-goodness, spur-jingling, hat-wearing cowboy — and a passionate volunteer for the American Red Cross.

After nearly 49 years of Red Cross service, he’s clearly made his mark on this storied institution. A long-term resident of Jamestown, MO, where he and his wife, Judy, run a horse farm, Tom was among the first Disaster Response volunteers called on May 22, 2019. That day, a devastating series of storms spawned multiple tornadoes across central Missouri.

The tornado touched down about a mile southwest of Eldon, MO, carrying winds of more than 100 miles per hour. The storm cut a path through the heart of the town, tearing up trees, ripping roofs from homes, and hurling debris.

Tom quickly set up a Red Cross shelter in the Eldon Community Center. His team provided showers, electricity, food and even a laundry to up to 40 residents. For 19 days, Tom served as night shelter manager, sleeping on a cot and listening to stories of loss.

“One of our most important jobs is to listen and allow clients to get whatever has happened out,” he said. “The more they talk about their losses, the less the trauma is pinned up inside them and the easier it is to recover.”

The Eldon tornado was not his “first rodeo.”  Tom has spent so many hours volunteering for the Red Cross that in 2014, he received his chapter’s Volunteer of the Year Award from the Red Cross Heart of Missouri Lifesavers.  A veteran of dozens of Red Cross deployments, he has two vests full of pins marking his service in locations ranging from California to Georgia and Hawaii to Florida and Louisiana.

“I have my shelter vest that I call my bling vest because there are so many pins,” Tom joked. “Then I have my vest for the many fires and other disasters I have gone to when called out on a regular basis.”

Dating back to the early 1900s, Red Cross pins have become badges of honor for volunteers who have given years of service and completed important projects.  Tom’s pins are placed between the American flag and his U.S. Navy Seabees pins. A Vietnam vet, Tom spent six years in the U.S. Navy and 20 years in the National Guard.

A native of Artesia, New Mexico, Tom grew up in Granite City, IL, but he has lived in central Missouri since 1969. He spent 37 years working in various roles producing transformers at what is now Swiss corporation Asea Brown Bovari, or ABB.       

In 1974, Tom volunteered to become the plant’s first aid and CPR instructor.  He was so good at it that he was asked by the local Red Cross chapter to become a volunteer first aid instructor. He moved on to the Disaster Action Team, and became certified in damage assessment and shelter management, and has served as a shelter manager during several disaster relief operations.

He is known as “Cowboy Tom,” and wears his Stetson wherever he goes, including among immigrant populations from Central America and Afghanistan. He has served at military bases and in convention halls—even overseeing purchasing clothing for some 6,000 refugees from Afghanistan who came to the United State with nothing.  These refugees found shelter at the Holloman Air Force base in Otero County, New Mexico, and were given essentials like hygiene kits, food, beds and clothing.

“We bought out a New Mexico Walmart to provide clothing for everyone,” Tom recalled.
“It was great seeing the smiles on the faces of the many children and women who finally had something to wear. I spent 21 days there, and it was worth every minute to show them kindness and help them recover from the trauma of leaving everything behind.”

By Susan Gallagher

American Red Cross volunteer Don Barnett can assemble data, draw correlations, and determine what is essential and what is just noise. But the compassion American Red Cross volunteer he feels for the citizens of his adopted hometown is what really stands out. That was never more true than immediately after the 2019 tornado disaster in Jefferson City.

After spending his childhood moving from state to state, living in Illinois, Texas, California, Washington, Don spent his high school high school years in Massachusetts. But since his family was from Independence, KS, he headed there after high school to attend college and live with his grandparents. Then, like his dad, Don joined the Air Force.

After military service, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and became an expert in statical analysis, planning and research.

“I began my career as an analyst at the Missouri Division of Employment Security in Kansas City,” he said. “I moved to Jefferson City with a job at Youth Services, which is responsible for the care and treatment of youth committed to custody by juvenile courts. I then spent many years in Jefferson City evaluating energy efficiency programs for the Department of Natural Resources.”

He retired after 29 years in state government, and after watching television news showing Red Cross volunteers helping others, he joined up in 2009.  Since then, Don has been an active volunteer for the Jefferson City-based Red Cross Central and Northern Missouri Chapter.

During his Red Cross volunteer career, Don has responded to 216 fires as a Disaster Action Team member. He has also deployed many times to disaster relief operations all across the country, driving emergency response vehicles, and he is a whiz at damage assessment — determining where the worst destruction has created the greatest need for recovery assistance.

In 2019, Don had plenty of work to do close to home.  On May 22nd, Jefferson City was hit by a tornado producing peak winds of 160 mph, which traveled 32 miles through central Missouri. In Jefferson City alone, the storm damaged 516 residential structures and 80 government buildings, in addition to 82 commercial buildings. There were no deaths, but 33 people suffered injuries, and insurance claims rose to $170 million.

The night the storm hit, Don and his wife, Mary Ellen, began to watch multiple television reports on the worsening weather.

“At midnight I realized the severity of what was happening and told my wife I was going into the Red Cross headquarters,” Don recalled, adding that three other stalwart volunteers showed up there about the same time and began assessing what they could do.  A Red Cross shelter was quickly established at Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

Don began calling in Red Cross shelter volunteers, and the foursome hooked up the shelter trailer and headed to the school to set up cots and other supplies. Then Don moved on to a disaster response office set up at the First United Methodist Church.  There he was assigned to take a newly hired staff person with him to conduct damage assessment.

“It was shocking,” he recalled.  “I was so upset about the scale of what I saw I just kept working for two full days completing disaster assessments on 125 residential sites.  At one point, I was exhausted—shaking and possibly dehydrated.   But somehow, I felt I could not stop because this was my town now. People I knew from all the years I had lived here were affected. It was incredibly sad, but we made a difference in their lives. We helped them at a time when they really needed help most."

By Susan Gallagher

It was the sirens that got her attention, though all was calm in her part of town.

American Red Cross volunteer Pam Protzman and her husband Dirk woke to an emergency signal bleeping from their television. A veteran fire fighter, Dirk turned on a scanner and heard the call for all firemen to report to duty. He left for duty, and Pam headed for the Jefferson City and the Red Cross Central and Northern Missouri Chapter headquarters.

There on that night in May 2019, she learned that an EF-3 tornado had hit Jefferson City. This “wedge” tornado — wider in its funnel than it was tall — moved at 40 miles an hour, shooting debris 13,000 feet into the air. It ripped the roofs off several businesses, blew out windows, and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes. In the next few days, the Red Cross provided more than 1,000 overnight shelter stays, over nine thousand meals and hundreds of personal care kits and other emergency supplies.

That night, Pam joined a group of three other dedicated volunteers to begin the work of providing shelter, offering resources and assessing damages.   The retired nurse of many years, mother of three and grandmother of three quickly enlisted her son to tow a Red Cross tailer filled with shelter supplies to the Thomas Jefferson Middle School shelter site. Then she swung into action finding out what resources were available for survivors. 

Pam was soon called to the city’s Emergency Operation Center, where she served survivors for 36 hours straight in the first days of disaster.

“We believe that the Red Cross must deliver the help survivors need when they are at the lowest point of their lives,” said this veteran of 16 years as a Red Cross volunteer. ““That is what the Red Cross is all about.”

Aiding others has been Pam’s guiding force almost all of her adult life. She started working at a nursing home at age 16 and then, after completing nursing school, served for 15 years in nursing homes. Later she worked for more than 14 years in the office of a family physician and then launched her own business providing private care in homes.

At the Red Cross, Pam has volunteered in disaster response services, helping dozens of fire victims. She has installed smoke alarms, offered safety education to children and taught first aid classes, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Pam has also been a Red Cross ambassador, meeting with officials and organizations in many of the 27 central Missouri counties her chapter covers.

She comes from generations of committed community leaders who lived in the northern Missouri town of Greentop, population 351 and 40 minutes from the Iowa state line. Pam and her family moved to Jefferson City in the 1980s for work, and since then, between her long nursing career and her volunteer work, she rarely goes anywhere without being recognized.  

“I was shopping the other day when a young woman called out to me telling me she was homeless again,” Pam recalled. “The tornado had destroyed her house so she moved to an apartment, where a fire broke out. Now she needs a place to live. In the middle of Walmart, I counseled her on what to do to find another place to live.”