Aid Gary and Jenny Mindell in Their Time of Need

Hello l’m Maria Sperling, I’m trying to get help for my sister Jenny and her husband Gray Mindell.

Hurricane’s Helene and Milton attacked two wonderful people Gary and Jenny Mindell. Gary or coach as he was affectionately called. Gary retired a few years before moving to Florida. Gary was a high school basketball coach in Springfield Massachusetts for over 30 years .

Gary was

selected by The Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Association selected him as its 2012 "Coach of the Year" for Division I in Western Mass. That was Gary’s fifth such award from the state association.

Gary and Jenny were very involved in the community . Jenny attended every game. She made hotdogs, She sold chips and soda to raise money for the team’s uniforms, trips and other things that the team participants needed .

because a lot of the

Kids were not able to pay for their uniforms. Helping the kids raised their self-esteem. The probability of the students graduating high school was higher. The Mindell’s did a lot for their community in the 20 + years they’ve been married.

Jenny retired from her job as an electronics specialist to take care of our mother.

about 15 years ago. My mother was dealing with Progressive Multiple sclerosis. Jenny and Gray were ready to move to Florida . When my mother got very sick . I’m her older sister Maria , I moved to Georgia 33 years ago .

Gary & Jenny decided to put their move to Florida off until our mother got better . After a 5 years my mother was not getting better . Jenny clean the house for our mother, Jenny took our mother to doctors appointments . She cooked for our mother , she did her laundry and she bathed her. It was a full-time time job. That she did with compassion and love.

during this time I was also diagnosed with remitting relapsing multiple sclerosis and before then our baby sister was the first one to be diagnosed with multiple scoliosis this disease. It’s very debilitating and it seems to lead to other illnesses if you’re not careful to

catch it in time.

Jenny volunteered to take care of our mother after 14 years. Our mother got diagnosed with. dementia . Which made her harder to deal with. Our mother was also diagnosed with cervical cancer. She went through a lot of immune deficiency problems and Jenny was there with her. Jenny would not leave our mother . Even though they went to Florida every year for 14 years on vacation. Their desire to move never ended.

Their wish was to downsize. From their big Massachusetts home and just get a little place to grow old together.

Our mother passed away October,09, 2022 . Gary and Jenny sold their house immediately after the funeral . they gave away almost everything they had .they loaded up their car with a few personal items Gary drove to Florida Jenny doesn’t drive due to her vision. They bought everything new once they arrived and got settled . They already bought a place because they visited every year they had friends there in a 55 and over community there was a house available and they bought it.

According to their friends they never had gotten tornadoes hurricanes anything debilitating they decided not to get flood insurance due to the fact that there was no history of hurricanes.

Jenny and Gary were both native of Springfield,Massachusetts. They were born and raised there .

Jenny was so happy.

And so excited she was living her dream during the day every day of the week they did different activities, and they had had a bunch of wonderful friends. We had dinner at different houses. It was a wonderful community of people who really like each other that is very hard to find and once you find it, you don’t want to let it go.

This was and is a very Traumatic experience for her and her husband. When the rain started getting so high it was coming in the house, “Gary grabbed our cat put him in his carrier and put her on his head and carry her out of the house to a river of water that

I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen. My brain was stuck on where my next step was going to land . Gary made sure I grab his shirt . To make sure I was next to my him so I wouldn’t lose him or he lose me and keep walking towards the Highland. I haven’t had time to process all of this because we’ve been washing clothes getting things out of the house. The floors are destroyed. They’re starting to get mold in them, I was able to find some clothes and wash and dry them at some of our friends house that weren’t hurt so badly. I’m doing OK thanks to the community that are still there for us. We’re staying with a few friends whose house wasn’t touched . they live there in the community and we eat outside every night together and we are going through it together. I know that’s how you do it. My sister Maria is a mental health therapist and she does group therapy and people get better as they talk about their trauma , cry about it. Be grateful for your lives and count your blessings I’ve never seen so much water in my life. I just had to keep moving because I thought if I stood still, it would come over my head, but that is over and the destruction is left for us to clean we didn’t have insurance, and we’re trying to see if you have it in your heart to help us with anything you can donate would be a blessing to my husband and myself “.

“With your donations, we plan to replace all the floors, all the interior walls. We have to replace the living room and bedroom furniture we have 2 bedrooms, We had three TVs that all went underwater, microwave kitchen , appliances, clothes for me and my husband.

Windows we have to get someone to look at the structural frame of the house. I’m not sure of that. This is just interior things that we know we did have, a brand new patio set that we had put outside. It was really pretty nice tent doors that washed away our grill washed away.

Thank you in advance for your kindness. And Your compassion”

Jenny, Maria