We’ll give you a bit of a peek behind the curtain, behind the scenes, a little inside baseball, for a moment.

When one of our colleagues told us late last week he might be able to get us a truck to load the supplies donated by Pinehurst Resort & Country Club employees, members and the local community for Hurricane Helene relief efforts in Western North Carolina, we did not expect to get what we got.

What we got was a tractor trailer. One of those 18-wheeler jobs. The big guy.

A little more behind the scenes for you – at first many of us on the Pinehurst Resort Diversity & Inclusion Council weren’t quite sure what we should do. The council’s efforts to get a Resort donation effort going in the early stages had collection boxes in place all around the Resort – in the lobbies of our hotels, at Pinehurst Brewing Co., at the Spa at Pinehurst, at our HR building, our sales building, and more.

But this was another thing altogether. The question was even raised at one point – should we send this truck back? Could we send it to someone else? Could it be better used to help relief efforts? We started to ask around, even as we opened the trailer’s door, the black emptiness inside prompting an overwhelming feeling.


But then something happened. We started collecting the boxes around the Resort, and we filled a few pallets. We set up a drop-off location next to the truck parked at Pinehurst Country Club and made a plan to start collecting items on Monday and Tuesday of this week, with plans for the truck to leave the property on Tuesday evening to go where it needed to go.

People, though, started driving up on Friday. They continued on Saturday and through Sunday. Each morning brought new piles of donated supplies. Word of mouth had traveled well ahead of social media.

Ohhhhh, people will come, to lightly paraphrase Field of Dreams.

If you park it, they will come.


PCC Members, Pinehurst employees, and residents kept streaming in through Monday and Tuesday. One gentleman walked by late Monday afternoon. “How long will you be here?” he asked.

“Through tomorrow,” was the reply.

“I’m going shopping right now. I have friends in Lake Lure. Their house is gone. I’ve got a few C-notes to spend, maybe more, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

The truck we originally thought was too big, it turns out, wasn’t big enough. We filled it. Not “we,” as in Pinehurst Resort, but WE, as in Pinehurst’s people. People from all walks of life who have some sort of connection with Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, in less than four days, filled a semi-truck with water, cleaning supplies, food, diapers, medicines, towels, blankets and so, so much more. It wasn’t at all close to the truly remarkable and amazing effort by so many good people at Moore County Airport. But that people still had this much more to give and drop off here says everything we need to know about our community.

The truck pulled out of the Pinehurst lot around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, lumbering around the small roundabout before heading west to chase the fading sun.

All we can say for right now is, Thank You.