Hastings, Minn.
Modern Woodmen representative since 1982 
As Mary Zack, a Modern Woodmen representative from Hastings, Minn., describes it, Interstate 10 along the Mississippi coast looked like a playground a 4-year-old had abandoned.
“It looked like little kids had played with toy cars and thrown them,” Mary says. “The cars were lying on the side of the road upside down and at angles, piled on top of each other with boats on top of that.”
Mary and her husband made the 1,253-mile, two-day trip to deliver items Modern Woodmen members in her area had collected for members of the Modern Woodmen camps they’d adopted in Mississippi.
Coffee to compassion Before the 2005 hurricane season, Mary had never met Hank Cochran, Lucedale, Miss. Both are Modern Woodmen representatives, and both serve as camp secretaries for member chapters in their area, but their paths hadn’t crossed. A trip to Professor Java’s coffee shop would change that.
“There were three of us gals there, and I commented that we needed to do something one-on-one to help people,” Mary says. “That’s what Modern Woodmen is all about.”
The coffee shop was already collecting items for victims, and Mary knew she could make connections through the Modern Woodmen agency office serving Mississippi. That led her to Hank.
Just 30 miles north of the Gulf, Hank felt lucky to have only lost his barn. “When you get down to the Gulf, there’s nothing but slabs left,” he says. “You can tell where a home had been, but nothing is there.”
Mary’s camps in Minnesota adopted Hank’s camps. Schoolchildren made personal care boxes, and others donated clothing, notebooks, markers, school supplies and much more. Members and others sorted, boxed and labeled the items. Some even gave Mary cash toward the $700 in gas it would take to get there. A local fireplace store gave her a trailer to haul it all, and she and her husband made the trip, despite the fact that he was recovering from gallbladder surgery.
Reaching the Gulf Hank and 15 members in his area had already gone door-to-door distributing $10,000 worth of nonperishable food items from Modern Woodmen to those in need. They hit the road again when Mary arrived.
“We literally drove around and asked people if they needed the stuff we had,” Mary says.
“When Mary came through with the stuff from the camps in Minnesota … words can’t express it,” Hank says. “I didn’t even know Mary before this.”
“To me it just needed to be done,” Mary says. “If you know you’ve helped just one person, you’ve made a difference, and it’s all worth it.”
Mary and her husband headed home before Hurricane Rita hit, but her camps plan to keep up the adoption and continue making runs to help those in need. Hank’s camps plan to use Modern Woodmen’s Good Neighbors Program to help some people rebuild in the future.
“On the whole we had a bunch of families we reached that really needed the help,” Hank says, “and I was glad to be part of it.”