WCU鈥檚 Jeremy Jones reflects one year after Helene in Our State magazine
Jeremy Jones during class
By Cam Adams
蘑菇短视频 English professor Jeremy Jones鈥檚 byline is a bit of a mainstay in Our State magazine.
His stories tend to involve history or family in some way, taking him to the family reunion of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, and leading him to write a piece on how Southerners call each other food names as terms of endearment.
But his latest story for the magazine was heavier.
Around the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene, Jones wrote 鈥淪tronger Than the Storm鈥� for the October edition of Our State. In it, Jones describes his own experience with the hurricane, Western North Carolina鈥檚 recovery and his struggle to grasp what that word means.
鈥淭his one was a cool one to get to write just because it was a chance to reflect on the hurricane and the flood in the midst of it,鈥� Jones said. 鈥淚 felt like I got some excuse to reflect when things are sort of still pretty chaotic. In that way, it was a cool but difficult opportunity.鈥�
Every October, Our State releases an edition focused on the western region of North Carolina. With Helene鈥檚 anniversary falling near it, naturally, a lot of the stories involved the storm.
鈥淭hey asked me to write something a bit more, kind of global or macro, just kind of looking at the whole of the region and thinking about these ideas of recovery,鈥� Jones said. 鈥淭hat was kind of a hard task to be honest.鈥�
Jones interviewed a number of experts for the story, ranging from conservationists to hydrologists, and though we didn鈥檛 quote them often, they certainly helped with the piece鈥檚 challenging aspect.
鈥淚 think they helped me just kind of orient myself a little bit more, because, to be honest, my house is still kind of in ruins, and so to be tasked with writing something optimistic was a little tricky,鈥� Jones said.
Jones鈥檚 story can be read at
