Claire Waldrop is seven years old. She likes singing, acting, dancing, designing clothes, decorating and learning about history, except for the wars.
She loves her 6-year-old brother Sam but doesn’t really like going to his baseball practices, which is where she had to be May 6. She had a butterfly painted on one side of her face and a cat on the other, from the Field Day that morning at her school, Oak Grove Elementary.
A lighthearted, chatty little girl with long blond hair, Claire is an A-honor roll student at her school. She’s also the youngest “recognized” disaster relief volunteer for Alabama Baptists.
“I broke the record,” she said proudly.
Almost as soon as the April 27 deadly tornado outbreak subsided, the pint-sized, big-hearted volunteer dreamed up a mission for her Girls in Action (GA) group at Hueytown Baptist Church — to make 100 first aid kits for tornado victims.
“We knew we had to get the word out pretty quickly,” Claire’s mother, Dana Waldrop, said. So the Waldrop family began collecting supplies in their own neighborhood in Hueytown the weekend after the storms.
Claire and Sam took a red Radio Flyer wagon and went from house to house collecting supplies, and other neighbors brought supplies to their house.
Members of Hueytown Baptist also donated supplies as well as money that was used to purchase the final items needed for the kits.
With supplies in hand, the GA group got busy filling 100 one-gallon sized Ziploc bags with tweezers, Band-Aids, alcohol, peroxide, cotton balls, Q-tips, antibiotic cream, aspirin, hot packs and other first aid supplies.
And on May 2, Claire and her team began their deliveries while touring disaster sites in Pleasant Grove and Concord.
The delivery team — which included Claire, her GA group, her mom, one of her teachers and a high school student — dropped off the kits at Concord’s disaster relief command center and Bethel Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove.
Dana Waldrop is proud that her daughter uses her oodles of energy and competitive streak to reach out to those in need.
“[Claire] comes up with the ideas; I just facilitate them,” she said. “If she had a car she’d do it herself.”
“It does make me feel good that she’s got a tender heart and wants to help people.”
Claire encouraged people to “do whatever they want” to offer assistance and encouragement to storm victims.
Her list of suggestions included going to hospitals and singing to patients, giving away clothes, food and water, and making first aid kits, like she did.
Claire got the idea to make first aid kits because she knew people who were trapped in their homes during the storm would be hurt.
“I knew a lot of people would be damaged,” she said. “If they were trapped, they’ve got to be damaged.”
Claire had a specific prayer request for the Gordons, a family from her church. Eddie and Kelly Gordon and their 18-month-old baby Eli lost their home in Concord and were hospitalized after the tornado threw them into a grove of pine trees, Dana Waldrop said.
And while Baby Eli is back home, his parents are still in the hospital, Claire noted at press time.
“I have been praying for the people who got caught in the tornado, and I hope they feel better,” she said, noting she’s also already thinking about projects she can do “next time this happens.”
“I’m hoping I can make a big difference in the world,” she said.
And Alabama Baptist disaster relief leaders think Claire is making a difference.
She caught their attention in January 2010 after the earthquake in Haiti killed more than 300,000 people.
She moved immediately to collect a truckload of supplies to help with disaster relief efforts.
After Claire went from classroom to classroom at her school collecting provisions for Haiti, she and her mom delivered them to a drop-off site at Lakeside Baptist Church, Birmingham.
There they met Mel Johnson, disaster relief strategist for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. As soon as he saw the Waldrops’ SUV loaded to the roof with first aid materials, he awarded Claire with an honorary disaster relief badge.
At the time, Claire’s church didn’t have a GA group, but her efforts toward Haiti relief attracted the attention of Candace McIntosh, executive director of Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union, who helped the church organize a GA group by the following September.
“Girls in Action, Royal Ambassadors and Children in Action are wonderful ways to teach children how to express what they learn through Scripture,” McIntosh said.
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