Thank You Tuscaloosa For Your Generous Oklahoma Donations

When news began breaking about an Oklahoma tornado on Monday afternoon, we quickly began seeing the images and videos of the destruction. It immediately hit home. The reaction around the office was to immediately start organizing a donation drive to give back to an area that gave a lot to Tuscaloosa after April 27, 2011.

Let me give you a quick timeline to help demonstrate just how incredible Tuscaloosa, Northport, and the surround areas are. News began coming in around 4:30pm CT. Within the hour, the office was discussing a plan. Phone calls were made to all types of area businesses and organizations.

By 7:30pm, we had established four locations - Walmart in Northport and Tuscaloosa, Chick-Fil-A in Northport, and University Mall. The news was shared on Facebook across all of our stations between 7:45-8:00p, and the response was enormous. Our posts about the plan to take donations was shared over 1,000 by people all across the country.

In fewer than 12 hours, our first station vehicle arrived at the Northport Chick-Fil-A to find people already waiting to give. How powerful is that?

That was a sign of things to come, as we had people visiting all four locations throughout the day. Everyone showed up BIG TIME for Oklahoma! We couldn't believe the amount of donations we had received in less than a day's time. This picture sums up the past 24 hours.

All of the clothing, diapers, medicine, sunscreen, bug spray, formula, water, books, paper towels, trash bags were packed onto a truck with a retired Army veteran from Moore, Oklahoma, who happened to be passing through town. The money and gift cards will be given to Toomer's For Tuscaloosa and they'll make sure it gets to the correct people in Oklahoma.

Thank you Tuscaloosa for making this possible. You've been amazing today and demonstrate just how special this community is. Please enjoy some other photos from today.