By Marcia Antipa, American Red Cross volunteer

“My husband was very surprised when he saw me putting oil in a truck,” Mary Noll laughed as she remembered her debut as an American Red Cross fleet maintenance volunteer. 

While she was in Louisiana during the 2016 floods, Noll was featured in a television news report as she added oil to an Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV), which tipped her husband off to her new skill.

“I was supposed to be the Mass Care feeding supervisor for the headquarters in Baton Rouge six years ago and they weren’t quite ready for me to start my job,” she recalled. “They said, ‘While you’re not busy, can you and this other gentleman go outside and inspect a couple of ERVs on the job’.” 

Noll did such a great job, and liked it, that she has stuck with fleet maintenance for several disaster deployments. Now she is in south Florida, keeping the distinctive white and red box trucks rolling to serve those who need food, water and cleanup supplies.

“As a dental hygienist who’s retired, it’s the last thing I thought I’d be doing, since I don’t like getting dirt under my nails,” Noll said with a chuckle. “I didn’t think I’d be working in my retirement servicing diesel trucks!”

Noll first volunteered for the Red Cross in September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

“I saw all the sadness of what was going on in New Orleans, and I thought to myself, how can I sit here on a couch and watch everything go by and not do something?” 

In the 17 years, Noll has responded to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and ice storms in multiple regions, including her home state of Pennsylvania. 

“I’ve been on Matthew, Florence; I skipped Harvey because my children were getting married.  I thought if I didn’t show up (for the ceremony), I’d be in big trouble,” she recalled.

Now, Noll and her fellow volunteers in Fleet Maintenance are busy keeping more than 130 trucks from all over the country in running order.

“We find if we get our hands on the trucks every three to four days and top off fluids and touch up little things, then we don’t have them break down.” 

The trucks are critical to the Red Cross mission, to carry volunteers with hot meals and cleanup supplies into neighborhoods ravaged by the hurricane’s winds and flooding. Noll knows people depend on the Red Cross to get back on the road to recovery, and that’s why she volunteers.

“It’s my mission in life to take care of people, because if something happened to my children or my family or my parents, I would want somebody there to take care of them,” she said.

To become a trained disaster volunteer, like Mary Noll, go to redcross.org/volunteer or call 1-800-REDCROSS.

American Red Cross relief is free to anyone with disaster-caused needs, thanks to the generosity of the American people. If you would like to support the Hurricane Ian response financially, visit redcross.org, text the words IAN to 90999 to make a $10 donation, or call 1-800-HELP NOW.