BY JOE ARCE AND COREY CRABLE
Martha Ortega Andree woke up one morning in early August to a disaster.
“I knew that there was a storm coming before I went to bed at around 10 o ‘clock. I looked out the window and I thought, ‘It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a storm,’” Andree (Ortega Andree), 95, recalls. “And so I went to bed thinking that, ‘Well, the storm has passed us,’ but it didn’t. It stopped, and it did quite a bit of damage in the neighborhood.”
That damage included her home – and Andree had slept through the entire ordeal.
“When I woke up, as soon as I opened the bedroom door, insulation and (debris) was in my hallway, and I could see that something happened. I looked out my office window and I couldn’t see because a fallen tree covered everything in the backyard,” Andree says. “There was a part of a tree (in her home). The ceiling came down, but very little tree was in the house. And it damaged two bedrooms it damaged the roof and it damaged the gutters in the back and did some damage to the windows.”
She took pictures of the damage the fallen tree had caused and sent them to her sons. Thankfully, she says, she lives down the street from a firehouse she called the firefighters on duty, who came to check on her.
Andree also called State Farm Insurance, her insurance provider for close to a decade, who only had bad news to deliver.
“They paid for the removal of the tree that was on my roof. They paid for that. And that’s all when it comes to the tree,” she says. “The rest was up to me. That was quite a burden.”
Andree was forced to take out a loan to pay for the cleanup and removal of the debris – after all, as a 95-year-old woman, she lives on a fixed income, unprepared for such a massive expense.
“When you stop and think I live on my Social Security and a very small retirement plan, that’s how I survive. But I have our Lord who watches over me, and so I am able to make the payments, but I need help to really get it all paid.”
To help pay back the loan, Andree and her sons have tried selling the wood from the tree to individuals and businesses alike.
“I had no, I had no idea what I was going to do with all that wood. When we knew the tree was going down, my sons called lumber companies and all kinds of companies to let them know that the tree was coming down, and were they interested in buying the wood?” she says. “No one was interested in buying the wood. They would take it free, but they didn’t want to buy it.”
Andree did, however, let a single mother take some of the wood home with her shortly after, Kenny Drazen showed up. He would buy some of the remaining wood, he told her, and help her sell the rest.
“I figured I’d stop in and see if I could help out,” says Drazen, who adds he’s gotten to know Andree by doing a few small chores for her. “I wish I could give her more money, but I’m going try to stack the wood up nicely so it draws people in so she get it off her yard.”
A yellow ribbon has been tied around the tree for decades, a symbol of Andree’s support of military service people. Though the tree might have come down, her support for the U.S. military remains steadfast.
“I have brothers that went to Vietnam. I have nieces and nephews. I have a granddaughter that went to Afghanistan. I have all kinds of young members of the family that are being deployed now,” she says. “It’s for all of them to let them know, hey, ‘We are thinking of you.’ My yellow ribbons is to say, ‘Thank you for protecting us.’”
Andree’s family has started a GoFundMe campaign to help her pay back the loan. As for Drazen, he says he’s happy to help Andree in her time of need.
“I figure if I could help out for an afternoon, it would be time well spent,” Drazen says. “I’m going to help her out as long as I can. She’s a nice lady.”
