For Families of AJA Teachers, Hurricane Helene Leaves Lasting Impact
As Hurricane Helene made landfall, history teacher Dr. Corrie Stephenson and her family prepared to hunker down in the basement for the night. Dr. Stephenson called her mother, who lives on a rural property in Douglas, Georgia and had opted to weather the storm there, thinking it would hit Atlanta harder. Little did they know that Helene would stray from its forecasted path, sparing Atlanta almost entirely and heading straight towards the Douglas area in Coffee County.
“Around two in the morning, I got a text from [my mom] that said ‘water is coming in,” Dr. Stephenson recalled. “I pulled the radar at that point and realized that the storm had stalled… and it had stalled over Coffee County.” As it turned out, Helene’s eye had passed right through it.

Sometime before dawn on Friday, September 27, a tree crashed onto Dr. Stephenson’s mom’s house. It tore through the roof, Dr. Stephenson’s former bedroom, a bathroom, and her mom’s work office, warping the house frame and shifting its foundation. Almost half of the property’s 30 old-growth trees fell down. “It took me days to get this whole story,” Dr. Stephenson said, until her mom and grandma, who both live on the Coffee County property, could make it out of the debris-strewn streets to her home in Atlanta.
The process of repairing her mother’s and grandmother’s homes would take months, and they have yet to fully recover from damage caused by Helene. For AJA teachers like Dr. Stephenson, with relatives living in areas along the storm’s path, Hurricane Helene’s effects have lingered far longer than the temporary power outages and floods experienced in metro Atlanta. The storm devastated communities, whose people have turned to each other and outside resources for help. Power outages lasted for weeks, homes and schools were destroyed, and some businesses may never reopen.
Amid repairs on her mother’s and grandmother’s houses, Dr. Stephenson and her family stayed with her mom and grandma for Thanksgiving. She spent her time there split between family meals and collecting piles of fallen trees and limbs.
“I was grateful to be with my family, grateful that no one got hurt, but it was a little sad to sit out there and see all the hard work my granddad did on that property” Dr. Stephenson said. “It’s just kind of gone now, and we’ve got to do all that work again.”
Dr. Stephenson wasn’t the only AJA teacher dealing with Hurricane Helene’s lasting effects. For English teacher Mrs. Sarah Peykoff, the storm brought similar anxieties as it veered toward her family in Augusta, Georgia, where she grew up. “We honestly thought we were going to get it really bad up in Kennesaw (norwest of Atlanta), and so I was super worried about that,” Mrs. Peykoff said. On Thursday night, however, she noticed that the hurricane radar indicated that it was approaching her family in Augusta instead.
Active power lines landed on the driveway of Mrs. Peykoff’s childhood home. Trees covered the yard and made it difficult for her parents to leave. Mrs. Peykoff’s parents went to stay with her for a few days in the aftermath, “reveling in the air conditioning and having good food.” She and her family then went to her parents house to help clear debris and bring equipment.
“The pictures don’t prepare you,” Mrs. Peykoff said. “Trees were just down everywhere.” She drove past familiar sights that are now damaged by the storm, such as her old high school, “which you couldn’t even see… from the road.”
Mrs. Peykoff also went to her sister’s house nearby to restore her knocked-down yard fence. Their families got to work on the fence, eventually beginning to “start talking and chatting, just hanging out on the weekend.” Although “it’s a horrible thing that happens [and] everyone’s kind of frustrated,” Mrs. Peykoff said the effort felt oddly enjoyable. At night, she layed out air mattresses in her parents’ living room, reminding her of power-outages when “we would all huddle in the living room with a flashlight or candles playing board games” as kids.
What shocks Mrs. Peykoff most is how long Helene’s blow has endured. Months later, some of her high school friends are living with parents or in rental homes because they cannot yet afford to repair their houses. Nevertheless, she said that Augusta has maintained its “close community.” In the early days after the storm, local restaurants cooked food that would otherwise spoil and served it on the main street, and the elementary school organized activities on the library lawn.
Hoping to boost the economy of communities devastated by Helene, science teacher Mrs. Catherine Brand traveled to Asheville, North Carolina during winter break. Her family was looking for a destination between their holiday religious obligations, and she wanted to contribute to Asheville’s recovery while doing so.

Upon arriving, Mrs. Brand encountered “just massive destruction.” Many of the restaurants and shops were boarded up, and piles of debris lay on both sides of the road. Mrs. Brand shopped in open venues and stayed in the Biltmore Estate, which she said employs most of Asheville’s residents.
Mrs. Brand and her family spoke with the wait staff, housekeeping, and concierge operators who serviced them. She said these interactions involved “a lot of reciprocal gratitude.”
“There’s something about seeing it for real, seeing the trees, [and] piles that were ten to 14 feet high,” she said. After around five weeks without power or work, the people that Mrs. Brand encountered were ready to move past this “rough” experience and were “really glad to be back at work.”
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