By Cameron Levine, Reporter

MOUNT BERRY, Ga – Like many Berry students, junior nursing student Miriam Miller has ties to western North Carolina, which was ravaged by Hurricane Helene in late September.

Miller decided that she could help specifically Canton, N.C., where she said she has family, so she put together a fundraiser for Berry’s Mountain Day in October.

“I have a lot of family in Canton,” she said. “I couldn’t get in touch with my sister for three days.”  

Selling lemonade, water and raspberry sweet tea for for $5 a glass, Miller raised nearly $2,300 to go toward relief and rebuilding in Canton, a town of about 4,400 less than 20 miles west of Asheville in Haywood County.

Miller said the monies she raised will go to the larger relief and rebuilding effort being organized by the Vine Anglican Church in Clyde, N.C.

“Friends, we’re in the ‘darkest valley’ and cannot help but feel the weight of how we in Haywood (and all of western NC) have been affected by Helene,” reads a post on Vine Anglican’s webpage. “It may be hard to know how to care for your neighbors right now, but God’s Spirit in us wants to love and care for them through us.”

As for Berry, which was in Helene’s crosshairs at several points during the forecasting of where the hurricane might go, the campus was fortunate.

“We got very lucky,” said Dr. Zack Taylor, associate professor of environmental science. “A lot of rain was absorbed by the ground since it was dry. It was mainly the wind to be worried about.”