Children of the storm: Relief worker paints smiles over flood memories

Ionia trucker makes a career out of helping

By CRAIG COLGAN
Detroit Free Press Special Writer
August 12, 1994

ALBANY, Ga. — Sisters Shontel and Taquana Staples, 4 and 6 years old, bounced around happily, squealing and grinning, then stopped and broke into a dance only they know the steps to.

Then, they turned and ran back into the school that is their temporary home. They sprinted down halls, calling to pals to come look at the designs the man from the Red Cross painted on their faces and fingernails.

Gil Amers, a volunteer from the Red Cross Chapter in Lansing, watched it all and grinned, too.

Ames, 51, who lives in Ionia County near the town of Mulliken, was responsible for quite a a few grins among Georgia flood victims and Red Cross workers during the past month.

The veteran disaster volunteer returned home Wednesday. A truck driver and carpenter by trade, Ames drove trucks loaded with relief supplies from city to Georgia. Whenever he could, he would go to the shelters, his paintbrushes stuffed into his shirt pocket.

Soon, crowds gathered.

“I’ve been called kind of a pied piper,” he said. “Kids are all over me. My house was flooded when I was a kid, so I can relate. When I paint someone’s nails, that gives me the chance to tell them about the Lord. I feel like I’m just doing what He wants me to do.”

Ames paints intricately designed miniature scenes on fingernails and on even smaller surfaces such as tacks and buttons, as well as big, fat images of balloons that fit nicely on cheeks and noses. His talent was therapy to children traumatized by a flood that killed 32 people and damaged or destroyed more than 12,000 homes in Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

Ames was among 81 Red Cross volunteers from Michigan — only seven states sent more help, officials said. Most spent about two weeks in the flood-ravaged area. Southwest Georgia along the Albany River was the hardest hit.

“I didn’t get a chance to work with children as much at the others,” Ames said. Ever the statistic keeper, Ames estimates he has averaged 100 nails painted a day during his stay in the flood area, and that includes toes of Red Cross volunteers and staff.

“I think what he is doing is tremendous,” said Kathleen Parsons, a psychologist and Red Cross volunteer from Middletown, Pa., who spends much of her time counseling young victims of the flood. “This is creative and fun, and these children have been through so much.”

Kelly Staples, mother of Shontel and Taquana, said her children are in their third shelter in five weeks. Their home was devastated.

“We went back and saw everything, and they cried at what they lost,” Staples said. “Today it rained, and they came up to me and said, ‘Is it going to flood again?’ So they visited the painter. It keeps their minds off all this.”

Ames said his wife, Irma, a public school teacher, is the read Red Cross volunteer. She pays the bills and manages the house while he’s off helping at disasters.

He says he got his start painting at a Veterans Administration hospital in Ann Arbor while recovering from an illness he contracted in Vietnam. Now, he sells artwork from his home and also is a volunteer preacher at a Lansing senior citizens center.

Ames said he logged 30,000 miles driving trucks to help victims of Hurricane Andrew in south Florida and the Los Angeles earthquake.

And he’s ready to go again, if another disaster strikes anywhere.

“I keep a bag packed at the foot of the bed.”

Craig Colgan, a Michigan native, is a writer based in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X: @CraigColgan. This article appeared in the Aug. 12, 1994 edition of the Detroit Free Press. Read about the story of the stories and how this project came about.

All content is ©1994, 2024 Craig Colgan.