WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — For a couple of days a month ago, there was no baseball field at Villa Park, in downtown White Sulphur Springs. There was no football field, no tennis courts, no playground.
“Nothing but brown water as far as I could see,” was how 85-year-old Irma Justice described the park a block from her house, after Howard's Creek overflowed its banks, submerging the park. It was part of the flash-flooding that killed 23 people in West Virginia, including 15 in Greenbrier County.
On Wednesday, the park moved one step closer to being functional with some help from some very big men, from very far away.
On the day before they started training camp at The Greenbrier resort, a mile up the road, the National Football League's New Orleans Saints spent a couple of hours removing debris, fixing things up, working to erase the last vestiges of the flood from the park.
There was quarterback Drew Brees, a Super Bowl most valuable player, carrying wooden beams to form the base of a rebuilt playground fence. And Sean Payton, a coach of the year, shoveling dirt to make trenches for those beams.
Brandin Cooks, a first-round draft pick and one of the fastest receivers in the league, worked a power washer on the silt-caked tennis courts. Reggie Bell, a rookie wide receiver, pushed a squeegee to discard the muck that Cooks dislodged.
Players repainted dugouts, hauled in bleachers and raked the fields to remove the rocks and sticks left behind by floodwater.
Darryl Tapp, a 10-year NFL veteran, was on his hands and knees to get rocks out of the grass.
“A lot of this stuff is really impacted,” he said. “You don't feel it until you get down there.”
Zach Strief, an offensive tackle, joined the Saints in 2006, the same year Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. He's one of only a handful of players, including Brees, who was with the team when that city was flooded.
“If any organization in the NFL understands what it takes to clean up from a natural disaster, it's us,” Strief said. “I remember it vividly, what it was like. And you know this stuff is important. A park like this affects and touches the lives of more people in this area than any one house does or any one building. I mean, how many families have come down here for baseball games and football games?”
Drew Brees (in back) & other New Orleans Saints helping to rebuild a flood damaged White Sulphur Springs playground pic.twitter.com/sWGpvTO9rc
— David Gutman (@davidlgutman) July 27, 2016
The Phillips family was one of those. They were there Wednesday — mother Becky and her two sons, Jason, 7, and Carter, 15 — to meet players and watch the action.
They lived on Mill Hill Drive, “the last house,” Carter noted. Their home was swept away by the flood.
Phillips' daughter, Mykala, 14, is still missing and is presumed dead.
“This was Mykala's favorite place,” the girl's mother said. “She came here everyday, just to hang out with friends.”
Roman Harper, a defensive back, was with the Saints after Katrina, spent the past two years with the Carolina Panthers, and is now back with the Saints for their third training camp in White Sulphur Springs.
“This community's been hit with some hard things, and this flood has been awful,” he said. “Maybe not as many people know about it, have checked on this community as much as needed to be, but we're just going to make sure we do our part while we're here.”
Harper spent his time spreading wood chips over the rocks and rough ground that lay beneath the playground equipment.
“It's good for the soul,” Harper said. “I haven't worked like this since I was back in Alabama with my dad, but it's normal work for me, growing up.
“And I'd much rather be doing this hard labor than running 300-yard gassers.”
Chief J.R. Pauley, of the White Sulphur Springs Police Department, said the Saints had contacted him, looking for somewhere they could help out. He put them together with Lowe's, which donated the equipment.
“I just thought, 'What better place to get fixed up [and] get the kids back playing ball,'” Pauley said. “A bunch of ballplayers fixing a ball field.”
Work is ongoing throughout the city, Pauley said. They're just getting to the point where most of flood debris has gotten hauled away, but he estimated that fewer than half of the city's businesses have reopened.
Katrina killed thousands of people — 11 years later, no one is sure exactly how many — and flooded a city about 500 times larger than White Sulphur Springs.
But Strief, while noting how much more massive Katrina was, saw similarities.
“People lost family members and loved ones and neighbors and houses, and so, yeah, it's every bit as devastating as Katrina was,” he said. “For the people involved, there's no such thing as more traumatic.
“And good luck feeling bad for yourself at training camp after coming out here and doing this.”
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.