I emailed my cousin Jill Douglas, married to musician Jerry Douglas, to make sure everyone was okay with all the flooding in Tennessee. I’d like to share an email with you that Jill sent me…
…Devastation is widespread in the Bellevue area; many, many of Olivia's friends [Jill’s daughter] are homeless. Being on the hill, we are fine. We lost a couple of trees, which fell in the TVA right of way. Ashley's home had water flowing through it for approximately 36 hours. On top of that, her beloved fox terrier died this morning. Our neighbor has two trees through her roof, which Grant tarped for her immediately after they fell, and Olivia moved all the furniture for her. Jerry and I were in North Carolina on Saturday and scheduled to travel through Nashville on the way to Memphis for the Beale Street Music festival. The tour bus arrived in Nashville around 8 a.m. Sunday. I awakened to the sound of water rushing against the bus at ear level in my bottom bunk. We were able to get into the parking lot at SoundCheck (rehearsal hall and storage space where Keith Urban – among many others – lost everything, just an hour later) and pick up a trailer which had been packed earlier in the week with Jerry and Alison's things [Jerry plays with Alison Krauss & Union Station]. I am certain if we had arrived 30 minutes later it would have been impossible to get in there. Leaving Soundcheck, we headed for Wal-Mart near our house to meet the other bus, only to learn the parking lot was flooded. So the driver aborted that mission and was going to bring us home, but getting across town was not possible. We had a call saying to forget the Beale St Fest, so at that point we made our way to the airport Marriott, high on a hill. Our entire bus checked-in, followed a couple of hrs later by many, many from the Opryland Hotel, which had to be evacuated. It has been a trying week for our fellow middle Tennesseans. We are all pitching in. The Red Cross found the need for their services to be far less than would be expected, due to the volunteer spirit of neighbor helping neighbor. Clean-up and rebuilding will be a monumental task. Thank goodness the President declared the area a federal disaster.
Thanks for checking in. Sorry to be so late in answering. It has been wild!
Sarah, please do what you can to get our story out and to let it be known that Nashville is cleaning up and we will be ready to welcome visitors soon! The CMA Music Festival WILL go on, as scheduled, next month.
Love you all,
Jill
