Student Feature
Call to Action
Blind Ambition
By Doug Goodnough
SHU Student Char Goolsby Lends a Helping Hand in Haiti
C
har Goolsby just had to do something.
Like probably many other Americans, the 45year-old resident of Southfield, Mich., and a student at Siena Heights University’s Metro Detroit
Center was watching the devastation of January’s
earthquake in Haiti unfold from her bedroom
via cable television news.
Haiti
She had no special connection to the Caribbean
island nation. No family or friends involved. But
that didn’t matter.
“They are human being like you and I,” she said.
“A friend of mine who is a flight attendant called
me and said, ‘Do you see what’s going on in Haiti? We’ve got to do something.’ I said, ‘What?’ ”
Nearly six months later, that “something” turned
out to be an ongoing relief effort she said has become a new calling. As a corporate trainer who
also works part-time at an airport, Goolsby said
that unique combination allowed her to speed
the delivery of vital supplies to Haiti.
10
Reflections Summer ’10
Goolsby and friend Liscious Williams took
their initial trip to Haiti just days after the earthquake hit. Lugging eight suitcases and a couple
of boxes full of supplies like cotton swabs,
deodorant, peroxide and toothpaste, the pair
used their airport connections to get themselves
and their cargo on a flight to the Dominican
Republic. At first, they had no way of getting to
neighboring Haiti until Williams had a chance
encounter with an employee at a local FedEx
store who eventually connected them to a
Haitian man named “Ralph.”
“We didn’t know him from a bucket of paint,”
Goolsby said of their guide, who met them
in Santo Domingo and then navigated them
through nearly seven hours of horrific mountainous roads until they arrived in the Haitian
capital of Port au Prince. “We were driving
through the mountains, through the hills, all
at night. When I look back on it, we really
should have been afraid. But we weren’t. I just
had a peace about the whole thing.”