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Trucker lauded for sheltering Katrina victims
By Jill Dunn
Left to right: Steve Russell, Celadon chairman and CEO; Jimmy Levan, Celadon driver and TCA Highway Angel; Tom Glaser, Celadon president.
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A trucker ready for a night’s sleep instead transformed his rig into a shelter for families stranded by Hurricane Katrina.
On Aug. 31, two days after Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, Jimmy Levan parked his truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Brookwood, Miss. The Celadon Trucking driver was ready for a night’s rest after completing his delivery, according to the Truckload Carriers Association, which recognized the Graysville, Ala., resident as a Highway Angel.
Many locals fleeing the hurricane’s devastation already had visited that Wal-Mart for gas and supplies. By the time Levan arrived, the gas was gone, and vehicles were stranded in the lot.
“The sheriff had told people to vacate the property, but some people had grabbed everything they could when they left [home], and they had no gas and no place to go,” Levan recalled.
Rather than let the families spend a hot night in their tightly packed vehicles, he invited them to sleep in his trailer. His guests included an asthmatic woman and her pet dogs that he let sleep on the top bunk.
Soon Levan, whose home state of Alabama had also been hit hard by Katrina, was host to more than 50 people. When he heard on the CB that a nearby service station might have fuel, he drove some of the motorists, clutching empty jugs, to the station. On his way back, he bought more than 100 McDonald’s hamburgers for the families in the lot.
One of the people he helped wrote his employer, based in Indiana, to express her thanks. “If the world was full of people like Jimmy, we would all be better off,” she wrote.
Levan said he had been helped when he was stranded and was just passing on the good deed. “I believe what goes around comes around,” he said.
TCA awarded Levan a Highway Angel lapel pin, certificate and patch for his good works.
Since the association founded the Highway Angel program in 1997, it has recognized hundreds of truckers for outstanding kindness and courage on the job.
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