Community Profile
Ruth Shirley: Driving Change in Our Community
By Kim S. Davis
The remarkable woman featured in this article positively impacts everyone who has grown up in Avery County in the last half-century. As her former colleague and long-time friend, this author can attest to the fact that everything Ruth Shirley does is because she cares deeply about her community and is dedicated to serving others. Her benevolence and leadership are inspired by an intense desire to ensure individuals and groups in her community have access and opportunity to live quality lives. She takes decisive actions and motivates others to act as well.
Ruth Shirley’s desire to serve emerged when she was just a teenager, and some readers may even remember being dropped off at school by “Ruthie” when she drove a school bus while still in high school. Always aspiring to serve others, she earned her teaching degree from Appalachian State University and returned to her community to work with high school students, as both a teacher and through her tireless involvement in extracurricular organizations. As founding sponsor of the Interact Club at Avery High School in the early 1990s, Ruth and her colleagues worked alongside hundreds of students building ramps for the elderly, doing yard work, raising funds, and spending countless hours volunteering for the community.
Her passion to enhance her community along with her ability to supervise and organize guided her transition to the role of Principal, where she excelled in her determination to put students first. She led by example and did whatever was necessary to secure support and materials for her students, their families, and her faculty. She worked tirelessly organizing fundraisers, locating and accessing charity funding, writing grants, and digging into her own pocket to provide the necessary resources.
After retiring from the school system, she continued her service work with Habitat for Humanity, drove a shuttle bus for Grandfather Mountain, and served as a member of the Avery County Board of Education (BOE), where she came full circle and volunteered as a fill-in bus driver. Eventually she resigned from the BOE to become a full-time bus driver because, as she puts it, “They had plenty of board members, but there was an extreme shortage of bus drivers.”
It might have been divine intervention that landed Ruth Shirley working part-time for Volunteer Avery County in January of 2024, a year that would usher in such destruction for many residents just eight months later. At first she worked 28 hours a week, mainly helping senior citizens with heat, rent, and minor repairs. However on September 27, the day Hurricane Helene took aim on Avery County, she was rapidly promoted to full-time and then some, working every day for long hours doing what she does best—getting things done for her community.
Immediately after the storm, Ms. Shirley went to the Rock Gym in Newland, NC, to help those who had come to the makeshift shelter, many of whom had brought their pets. Some of the evacuees came because they had no power or water; many had damage to their homes, and others had lost everything. Ruth Shirley sprang into action helping them so they could return to their homes as soon as possible. She was especially dedicated to helping the animals because, as she reflects, “These people had lost everything and their pets were all some of them had left.”
Her many tireless years of dedication to the community and developing relationships led her to another valuable resource. One of her students from the Interact Club, Anna Wilson, had become a veterinarian. Anna came back to her community and volunteered to help the animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, and birds. Ruth jokingly says that she “drew the line at pet snakes.”
During the first few months following the storm, Shirley worked extended hours seven days a week dealing with whatever came up. Her primary role was to assess what was needed and secure those necessities. For example, an evacuee arrived at the shelter with her cell phone but no debit card or identification. Once cellular service was restored, her bill came due; Shirley helped her get the bill paid and complete the process to get a new debit card and social security card.
Additionally, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, organizations would reach out to Shirley because they knew she was on the front lines. Someone from the rescue squad might call and say, “If you can get Joe* a generator and fuel, he could go back home.” So Shirley would locate the generator and fuel from the many organizations collecting donations and Joe could return home.
Once shelter guests had relocated into hotels, or were able to get back into their homes, Shirley’s role shifted once more. She again called on those long-forged relationships and her experience acquiring resources to continue to meet the goal of getting all displaced families back into their homes, and to also make sure they had what they needed to repair their homes. This was an immense task because of the continued housing needs throughout Avery County after Helene.
However, our resilient mountain communities are home to dedicated individuals and organizations working to restore the region’s housing needs. These people and groups ultimately formed a task force to maximize expertise and abilities, eliminate duplication, and streamline the huge endeavor of recovery for all. Jesse Pope, President and Executive Director of the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation, called a meeting for local entities working with hurricane victims—out of that meeting, the Avery County Long Term Recovery Group (LTRG) emerged. Shirley was appointed Vice Chair of the Group. Made up of faith-based, non-profit, government, and business organizations, their mission is to “Mind the Gap between Strategic Intent and Capability to Act.”
The LTRG is a clearinghouse for identifying the ongoing needs of Avery County residents and locating the resources to meet those needs, a perfect fit for Shirley. Specifically, Ms. Shirley says that what she does is find out what someone might need for their housing to be whole. For instance, if someone needs flooring, they speak with Shirley; she gets donations or grants to help pay for the flooring, and then locates and acquires the materials. There are some needs that are too great for the LTRG to manage so Shirley helps those individuals get in touch with the appropriate agency or organization. She says her biggest lesson in this is, “You have to know your limitations. Some cases are too big for me to take on and so I find others who are able to help.”
Shirley notes that there were 175 households needing housing within the county after Hurricane Helene and multiple lists of needs organized by very broad criteria. So the LTRG continues to determine the levels of need, vett those needs, organize volunteers, locate grant monies or donations, and work on a case by case basis to fulfill requests. With so many varying cases, the Group hired James Eury as the case manager to ensure the abundant tasks continue to be well managed and organized.
Today, through the hard work of so many dedicated volunteers, including the LTRG and Ruth Shirley, most of the hurricane-displaced families have returned to their homes, or are living securely in other rental or temporary housing. As Shirley recounted the constant juggling required to meet the needs of so many, she was quick to recognize the numerous other people who she says have “done a hundred times more than I have.” But as this author and those who work with Shirley are fully aware, only a super-hero can accomplish all that she has for our beloved mountain community.
*Not the resident’s real name