A University of Tennessee Extension exercise program that coaches seniors on how to increase their physical strength was pivotal during a natural disaster in Waverly, Tennessee, and may have even saved a life.
The classes, called Stay Strong, Stay Healthy, emphasize morning exercise to build muscle, loosen joints, and get participants’ hearts pumping. UT Extension Humphreys County family and consumer sciences agent Denise Schaeffer serves as instructor.
“It’s important for seniors because a lot of the movements we do in class specifically can help them do everyday things in their home,” Schaeffer says.
Those movements mattered in August 2021, when fifteen inches of rain poured down upon the county. Flash flooding claimed twenty lives and destroyed more than 400 homes and businesses. One of those homes belonged to Debra Ashton. Several of her neighbors didn’t make it, including a teenager and two younger children down her street. Ashton is part of the Stay Strong classes and says her fitness was critical the day of the flood. She says it saved her life that day.
Ashton is part of the “Stay Strong” classes, and fitness was critical the day of the flood. “Yes, I feel that it saved my life,” she says.
Water entered her home and quickly reached more than six feet deep. Ashton escaped by climbing onto a platform and then into the bed of a pickup truck, but she says it felt like ocean waves were banging against the truck, and she fell in the water. In the fast-moving current, Ashton was able to grab a log or a pole—she’s unsure which—and hold on, floating to safer ground. “I grabbed my arms across it, put it up against my chest. I’ll admit I put a smile on my face.” Later that day, she used her strength again, this time to help pull a neighbor up onto a ledge and out of the water.
“I get chills hearing Debra talk about it,” says Jennifer Ward, program director for the Tennessee Nutrition and Consumer Education Program (TNCEP), which helps to coordinate Stay Strong, Stay Healthy. Ward says programs like these help people with lower incomes live healthier lives. “These are not people who can go get a gym pass,” she says. “These are
not people who live generally in neighborhoods with really clean, clear walking paths and things like that. Stay Strong, Stay Healthy is going into places and reaching some of our most vulnerable communities.”
Jeanmarie Salie, also with TNCEP, cites an added benefit of the program. “As we grow older, and people are moving on in their lives, it’s common to feel isolated. We found that participants are connecting more with their community members and becoming more social,” she says.
Exercise is good for us, and sometimes it takes on an even greater meaning. As Waverly rebuilds, it’s all about finding strength.
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