A former Columbia minister is requesting donations for tornado victims in Alabama where he now lives.
Ken Stover of Sonrise Ministries will be bringing a trailer to collect the goods during a book signing March 27 at the Columbia-Marion County Public Library.
Stover was raised in Beauregard, Ala., where an F4 tornado hit on March 3 and claimed 23 lives. He now lives in Beulah, Ala., about 12 miles from the cyclone’s path.
Stover said 117 homes were destroyed, and families have lost everything.
“When Katrina hit, the southern half of Mississippi was flat. Here, we’ve got a mile-wide strip,” he said. “They said it stayed on the ground for 70 miles. There’s nothing left for a mile-wide across there.”
He has requested paper goods, cleaning supplies, hygiene products, snack food and non-perishable food items but no clothes or water because they have enough of those.
Mona Swayze, Marion County branch manager, said people can go ahead and bring donations and the library will keep them until the book signing.
Stover lived in Columbia from about 1994 to 2011 and was active in the community, leading multiple charitable efforts and serving for a time as president of the Marion County Ministerial Association. He’s now pastor of Shady Grove Christian Church in Opelika, Ala.
On the second Saturday in April, Stover plans to have the donations assembled and broken down into boxes and will go family to family distributing them.
During the book signing from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 27, copies of Stover’s second book, “The Life and Times of a Circuit Riding Preacher,” will be $15. He said it’s a fictionalized account starting in the mid-1800s that includes true happenings that have happened to him during his 34 years of ministry, which he said includes work in Canada, Mexico and 38 states.
“The people in Marion County, they are some of the most giving people I’ve ever dealt with in my life,” Stover said.
