The Quiet People: Silas Locke and John Chappell

When disaster strikes, there are all kinds of men and women who become "Quiet People"—people who respond to needs without being asked, people who work without thought of thanks or pay. Take Silas Locke and John Chappell, both members of Dudley Baptist Church in Dublin, Georgia.

One Sunday last September, just after Hurricane Hugo had devastated the South Carolina coast, their pastor called for volunteers to help with emergency relief. Silas, semiretired after 30 years as a civilian mechanic with the Air Force, spent a weekend clearing debris, including acre after acre of fallen pine trees.

When he returned home, his friend John, a farmer, called with an idea: "Why can't we saw those pines into lumber now, before the bugs get into them? You know I have a portable sawmill."

So Silas and John spoke with a McClellanville, South Carolina, church organization handling a cleanup operation, and soon John was hitching his sawmill—a 20-foot-frame with a Volkswagen engine—to his pickup truck. It was a four-hour drive to the Carolina coast.

Once there, they set up on a muddy, vacant lot used as a relief center and camped out in an empty trailer. Tractors pulled the downed trees from blocked roads and debris-strewn yards for the men to saw. The lumber was green, which meant it couldn't be used for new construction, but it worked fine for quick patches on roofs and fixing steps and porches. And it was all free.

Soon nearby shrimpers came to them with another use in mind. A lot of beached trawlers needed to be put back into the water. Could Silas and John saw timbers to be used as supports for this operation? They could and they did.

Even the shavings were useful. They were spread over the lumberyard to cut down on the mud, and trucked to a nearby encampment for volunteers to cover the soggy ground.

Over the next few months, Silas and John spent nearly as much time in South Carolina as in Georgia. With the cold weather came another call—oyster season. The area's economy couldn't recover until residents were able to return to harvesting oysters, but most of their boats were gone. A New Jersey firm was ready to donate motors; could Silas and John saw planks to use in constructing 25 flatboats? Again the answer, "Sure."

With the sound of their constantly buzzing sawmill, it's an unlikely word to use, but Silas and John certainly are two "quiet" people.