“They're just awesome. Not just the gifts that were sent to us but the actual actions, that's the true gift of Christmas; the thought that we put aside ourselves and think about other people,” Smith said Tuesday as she was preparing dinner at her home in Choctaw before heading off to work.
On Dec. 16, eight days after an ice storm swept across the state, Smith found little solace in utility companies' assurances that crews were working feverishly to get power back on to her and her neighbors at their mobile home park.
Smith told The Associated Press then that she and her 15-year-old son stayed with a friend for a few days before moving on to a motel until her money ran out. Smith thought she wouldn't be able to give her teenage son and his three younger siblings a Christmas at all.
Then she was flooded with mail from people around the country whom she didn't know. They sent well wishes and money, which Smith said she used to buy presents for her family.
“They got things they had wanted and the basic Christmas presents: socks, underwear, slippers, pants and shirts. It got my son an MP3 player. I would never have been able to buy him that, especially not after the disaster,” she said.
Memories of the storm still linger in Oklahoma, 17 days after it began unleashing multiple rounds of freezing rain. When it left three days later, damage stretched along Interstate 44 from south of Oklahoma City to Tulsa and 29 people were dead.
More than 640,000 homes and businesses were without power - the worst storm ever faced by Oklahoma's utility companies because it struck the state's three largest cities and surrounding communities.
There were still dozens of homes without power on Christmas Day, mainly those that sustained damage to outside electrical boxes that had to be repaired before power could be returned.
Community leaders knew the repairs could run as high as $1,000 per home and a program to waive those costs was set up in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metropolitan areas. Four Tulsa-area companies went beyond that and offered the services of their electricians, like Randy Detring, on Christmas Day.
“I hated to see people without power,” said Detring, who works for Buettner, an electrical contractor. “I just told my wife: 'If we didn't have power, you'd be screaming.”'
Detring's home lost power for about 1 1/2 weeks, but his neighbor loaned him a generator, Detring said.
“I have kind of enjoyed it. I've had families jump off the porch, they were so thankful,” he said as he was completing a job in hard-hit north Tulsa.
In downtown Oklahoma City, a line of people wrapped around the Cox Convention Center for the annual Red Andrews Christmas Dinner.
Jody McCord, one of the event's organizers, said officials were a bit concerned when more people than usual showed up this year.
“We're worried about food, about whether we're going to run out. And that's because of the ice storm, it did affect everything,” McCord told reporters.
Organizers had no toys to give children a week ago, but a toy drive by a group of motorcyclists helped out, McCord said.
“It was scary, but a week ahead of time, everybody came through.”
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