Western NC Pride events celebrate resilience post-Helene
The storm caused widespread and severe damage, left people without water and electricity for weeks and forced the closure of businesses.
At Grey Hawk Bar & Gardens in Lake Lure, you'll find a quiet sense of calm hanging over the property. The beautiful flowers and carefully designed seating areas are quite the contrast with what things looked like in late September 2024.
'The whole property was sort of sheeted with water, some surface level flooding, a few trees down,' said co-owner George Carter. 'But really we were very, very lucky.'
Others down the road weren't as lucky.
'Houses underwater, boat houses underwater, boats popping through the roofs of their boat houses, so it was it was shock,' said Carter. 'It really was shock.'
Nearly nine months later, things are looking a lot better for Lake Lure and for Grey Hawk. After months of closure and slow business, the cocktails are flowing, and people are coming back to the restaurant just in time for the co-owners to get ready to host a Pride Festival coming up on June 21. They believe it'll be Rutherford County's first.
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'I do think that there will be a slight difference this year of just folks feeling closer, feeling a sense of relief and ready to just kind of, you know, soak in the sun, unwind and be with each other,' said co-owner Adam Polaski.
When Polaski isn't at the restaurant, he's doing advocacy work with the Campaign for Southern Equality in Asheville.
'Historically, LGBTQ folks have less access to resources across the board anyway at any time, especially during Helene,' said Sheri Keller, who works with the campaign. 'There was a lot of churches that had resources and folks that are not normally accepted at churches or might have some trauma around that were able to come here and feel like feel in a safe space.'
The team started a weekly resource center where people could get the necessities, but also haircuts and massages to regain a sense of normalcy.
'As the immediate needs from the storm have kind of dissipated, there's still this need for community and that's why we have continued to do this center every month,' said Dorian Volpe, who works with the campaign.
With Western North Carolina Pride events coming up throughout the month of June, these allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community are reflecting on the lessons the storm taught them.
'We connected to our neighbors differently,' said Volpe. 'We shared supplies, we shared food, we shared resources. And I'm really optimistic that some of that will carry over into the pride events in this season.'
They're also looking back on what it's meant to them to welcome the community into a safe space.
'People think of Lake Lure as being pretty homogeneous and pretty like sort of similar type of person who lives here,' said Carter. 'But as we've sort of settled in here, we we've seen that there's all types of people here and we have really found joy in bringing them out.'
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