Advocate Good Samaritan Nurse Joins Zac Brown Band's Hurricane Relief Efforts

An Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital nurse and Lombard family are teaming up with country music's Zac Brown Band to collect donations for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

Donations will be collected from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Lombard Kmart, 345 W. Roosevelt Road. A 53-foot semi-tractor trailer will be set up in the parking lot.

The most needed items include contractor bags, shovels, pry bars, wheelbarrows, five-gallon buckets, brooms, mold remover, one-or two-gallon hand pump sprayers, saws, portable generators and batteries, according to a press release.

All items collected will be sent to one of the areas hit hardest by the storm, Breezy Point, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. 

Amy Biedron, a nurse in Good Samaritan Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, coordinated the project with Rob and Sherree Witt of Lombard, who own a trucking company and donated use of the truck and driver.

Biedron got to know the couple three years ago while caring for their youngest child, Otto, who spent two months in the neonatal intensive care unit after he was born 11 weeks early.

“As the Hurricane Sandy story unfolded, I felt compelled to give back,” Biedron said in a press release. “It started with this small idea to collect supplies and deliver them as people have stepped forward to donate time and resources. All the logistics came together in just a few days.”

Biedron, an Aurora resident, and the Witts are coordinating the project through the Zac Brown Band’s “Zamily Action Committee,” a philanthropic club for fans of the band. Biedron’s manager, Peggy Farrell, is also a member of the fan club.

Farrell is collecting supplies in her units that her husband will drop off at the collection site, the release states.

“Our goal is to fill the semi,” Biedron said.

After the truck and caravan depart Lombard, the group will pick up more donations at scheduled stops in Indianapolis; Cincinnati; Nashville, TN; Birmingham, AL; Atlanta; Greensboro, NC; Woodbridge, VA; Turnersville, NJ; and Brooklyn, NY, before arriving in Breezy Point on Dec. 5. 

For more information on the Zac Brown Band's efforts, visit www.zamily.org.

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