PITTSBURGH---What causes a person to volunteer to help a stranger? What creates the drive within a person to be available at all hours of the night to help a family who has lost everything in a fire? The American Red Cross Southwestern PA Chapter calls it the "spirit of volunteerism" and is honoring the local volunteers who helped the chapter during last year’s tumultuous hurricane season at its 89th annual board of directors meeting.

The meeting will be Thursday, Sept. 28, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at The Rivers Club, One Oxford Centre, 301 Grant St. Seven new board members will be inducted.

Hundreds of community members gave of their time to help our chapter during the 2005 hurricane season and many of them stayed involved in our disaster response functions. Some of these volunteers will be available to share their stories at the meeting.

Steve Noe, a Red Cross disaster responder, was deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.Noe said, "I remember this enormous yacht impaled on a pole, and I thought, ‘What fury the storm must have had.’ I remember as far as the eye could see piles and piles of sawdust from the trees and lumber that had been destroyed. And then I remember the faces of mothers and children as I handed them food and water from the Red Cross emergency response vehicle – it forever changed my life."

Thomas Wiley, a Red Cross volunteer sent to a Virginia Call Center to support hurricane relief, started working at the call center a few weeks before Thanksgiving and found himself still there on Christmas morning – and New Year’s Eve, too. "I was given the opportunity to be the voice on the phone that broke the chain of busy signals that thousands of people heard after the hurricane," he said. "I was able to talk to people in desperation – help solve their problems – and then hang up knowing someone had new financial assistance and, more important, hope."