Will Belk is a fourth-generation dealer. He continues the Belk family legacy of caring for the community that his great-grandfather and grandfather started when they opened the dealership in 1945. Today, the Belk family has two stores — Belk Ford and Oxford Toyota — located right next to each other and run as sister stores.
Jamison Roane has 18 years of cumulative experience in the industry. He worked for the Belk family of dealerships from 2007-13 and jumped at the opportunity to return to work with them in June 2024. Jamison is currently the general sales manager at Oxford Toyota; in the six short months that he’s been there, he knows that he is where he belongs. He is home.
It is often said that hard times don’t create heroes, but it is during hard times that the hero within us is revealed. And in this instance, many heroes rose to the occasion.
On Saturday, Sept. 28, Will and Jamison had plans to take the visiting Toyota representative out for the day, show him around town and relax while watching a little football. The Ole Miss Rebels and Kentucky Wildcats were facing off at Vaught Hemingway Stadium. Although Ole Miss lost to Kentucky, the day was a success when it came to business and building relationships.
Unbeknownst to the group, at the same time they were cheering for their team, Hurricane Helene was unleashing devastation on neighboring states. The Category 4 hurricane showed no mercy as large swaths of North Carolina and Tennessee were washed away in the subsequent flooding. Sunday came and went for both Will and Jamison. They were both aware that the storm had hit but had no idea that multiple dams had broken and so many fellow Americans were facing dire circumstances.
Early Monday morning, even before he got to work, Will started receiving alarming calls from a couple of his employees. The employees had family members who lost everything in the floods of Hurricane Helene. One of those employees, Benny, asked if a trailer could be placed at the dealership, near the road, in view of passersby, letting everyone know that donations were being accepted for the victims. Without hesitation, Will said, “Yeah! Let’s get a cargo trailer, and we’ll put it out front.”
After hanging up, Will jumped into action, alerting Jamison and others to the dire situation, calling the local radio station and asking for airtime, and getting a sign made to hang on the trailer. “The trailer was there within a matter of hours,” Jamison said. “We hung the donation sign and the American flag on the trailer and parked it close to the highway so it would catch a lot of attention.”
That afternoon, Will and Jamison got on the radio and asked the local community for help. The first donation came within a few hours. “I remember the first person from the public who came to drop something off. It was that Monday afternoon, and we were so excited!” Will continued, “We weren’t sure who would show up so we went out and purchased several items ourselves to start filling the trailer and get the ball rolling.”
But people started showing up — in numbers, some even late at night — dropping donations off outside the trailer. The entire community got behind the effort, from local churches and the police department to fraternities and sororities.
A few days into the ever-growing relief efforts, Will stayed late at the office to catch up on work when the most selfless act of compassion occurred. “I was here by myself, and it was around 10:00 p.m. I happened to look out the window, and I saw a lady outside in the lot. I knew her personally as she rented a house from me years ago. She is in her late 60s, cleans houses for a living and could use some assistance herself,” Will recalled. “She was dropping off donations at the trailer, so I went outside to speak with her. While dropping off bags of clothes, she noticed me standing there and handed me a $50 bill to put in the cash donation jar we had inside. I was so humbled and touched.”
So many donations arrived in such a short amount of time that a 27-foot Penske moving truck was rented, in addition to the trailer, to handle the sheer volume. Loading the donations was another matter. The Belk Ford and Oxford Toyota teams pitched in to physically load the trailer themselves. However, the donations didn’t stop, and the truck was loaded and unloaded four times in an effort to make everything fit.
The physical donations kept coming, and people also showed up one after another to donate their time. “One of the most impactful moments to me was when, without being asked, two different fraternities, the Ole Miss Soccer coach and his son, police officers and a number of high school students all showed up to help,” Jamison said. “They formed a human chain all the way out to the highway and were tossing cases of donated water to each other off an 18-wheeler.”
By Friday, a group of volunteers, including Will, was ready to head out and deliver much-needed supplies. They had heard talk that FEMA was stopping donations from getting in. A plan was carefully made as to the route that would be taken to the Cocke County, Tennessee, area. As the group got closer to their destination, they saw how bad things were for themselves. “We drove through an area along the river that had been completely flooded. Homes were washed out, mobile homes were turned over, and debris and trees were strewn everywhere. Everything was covered in silt and mud,” Will said. “The Highway Patrol had many roads blocked off, but we were able to make it up to a little church that was elevated in the hills.”
The scene was sobering. The whole area had been washed away, except for the Pigeon Valley Church. The church was being used as a makeshift drop center. They had been collecting supplies, and as they took them in, local people with four-wheel drive trucks, jeeps and ATVs would load the supplies on their vehicles and head out, looking for survivors.
“It was a beautiful thing to see how the community came together so quickly, not just here at Oxford with the people generously donating, but the people in the devastated communities,” Will said. “They didn’t have the government assistance you would think they would. It was simply community members coming together, helping their fellow neighbors.”
The story doesn’t stop here — from the relief efforts that were started early on a Monday morning to just four days later delivering life-saving supplies to devastated communities — future deliveries are being planned as the donations keep coming.
Hats off to Will, Jamison, the Belk Ford and Oxford Toyota teams, and the entire community of Oxford, Mississippi. Your simple acts of kindness have shown us all what it means to be an American.
