CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Over the last few days, you may have noticed an uptick in Jeeps cruising the streets around town, or assisting stranded motorists after their cars got stuck in the ice and snow. These folks are part of the Clarksville Jeep Crew.
“Whether it be pulling people out of ditches, or with all these cars that have been having issues getting up the steep hills in Clarksville with the weather, we’ll pull them up the hill,” Jeep driver Jarrod Kitchen said.
Essential help
Kitchen is a member of the Clarksville Jeep Crew. He’s a wheeled vehicle mechanic with the Army at Fort Campbell, and he joined the crew upon returning from a lengthy deployment to South Korea at the end of January.
He drives a dark green, 1996 Jeep Cherokee Country that he lovingly named “Gumby.”
When Clarksville got slammed with two back-to-back winter storms over the past week that created dangerous road conditions, Kitchen and the crew stepped up, offering tows and rides to essential workers – all done without a tip or reimbursement.
Brookdale Senior Living on Memorial Drive is one such healthcare facility in Clarksville whose employees needed rides to work. Denise Rangel, the business office coordinator at Brookdale, put out an all-call on Facebook asking if anyone could help with rides for the Brookdale associates, and the Clarksville Jeep Crew stepped up.
“Within just a matter of moments, Kenneth (Klein) already had rides for my people, and I just watched them set everything up from their Facebook page and group. They had a whole dispatch system set up, so I just had to give them an associate’s name, information, where to pick up from, where the community was, and what time their shift was,” Rangel told Clarksville Now.
How it started
Kenneth Klein founded the Clarksville Jeep Crew in 2019 with some friends, and formed the Facebook page that they now centralize community efforts through.
“My husband got together with a few guys who wanted to start a group that they can meet up and try to go out to Turkey Bay or off-road parks together. So we started a Facebook page with just a few of them. It wasn’t long after that we had almost 100 people added into the group pretty quickly,” Kenneth Klein’s wife, Valerie, told Clarksville Now.
Now the group has over 1,200 members in the Facebook group.
Well-oiled machine
The crew had two teams running throughout the week: one team coordinated via walkie-talkie apps and were in communication with the Clarksville Police Department to step in where the police requested assistance. The other half of the group ran healthcare workers to and from their vital workplaces, like Brookdale.
“We’ve done over 200 transports to and from work for people. We’ve got five or six people running an Excel spreadsheet, and then we’ve got three crew members taking requests,” Valerie said.
When the calls came in, groups of five or 10 Jeep drivers stationed themselves all over town awaiting rescue calls to come through. Each call was taken and documented in the spreadsheet. Klein said the longest someone had to wait for help was five or 10 minutes.
“It’s really been a 24-hour job. I don’t think any of us realized how much work it was going to be when we signed up for it. We’re taking calls 24/7. My husband’s phone stops ringing around 1 a.m., but then starts ringing again around 3 or 4 a.m.,” Valerie added with an almost nervous laugh.
The crew also stepped up in other ways during the winter storms.
“There was a mother and father whose baby needed formula, and all the stores were closed around them, so one of the crew members actually had some formula and took it to them,” Valerie said.
Along with employees at Brookdale, Tennova Healthcare, and a slew of other health facilities around town, healthcare workers who reside in Clarksville received rides down to their jobs at Vanderbilt in Nashville, The crew eventually stopped offering rides outside of Montgomery County as they had too many local calls for rescue.
“If there’s a really desperate situation, we’re going to do everything we can to help out,” Valerie added.
More than just a Jeep
The crew’s main motivation is to give back to the community where they can. In addition to helping out during inclement weather situations, the crew steps up when the community needs support that only a Jeep can provide.
They paid respect to Ms. Sheryl, a beloved member of the Sango community who was hit and killed on Feb. 10, at her services on Feb. 13 before the winter weather moved in the following day.
“We had about 20 or so Jeeps that did a funeral lineup for her,” Kitchen said.
“The view that we had to for the crew was really to just be family-friendly, community-oriented, to give back where we could, to clean up where we we could. It’s really just all about giving back to the community and supporting in any way that we can,” Valerie added.
The group also took part in the search for Justin Sawyer on Feb. 6, in which the Jeep drivers navigated muddy backroads in looking for the 20-year-old.
“We just can’t give them enough praise. It’s a blessing to see all of those people out there helping us, and helping strangers that they don’t know, and the trickle-down effect that has is just tremendous,” Rangel said.