Asheville Watchdog is bringing you the stories behind the staggering loss of life from Helene, the children, parents, grandparents, multiple generations of a single family, all gone in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the mountains of western North Carolina. This is the seventh installment.

Buncombe County’s homeless advocates feared the worst: Helene would be deadly for the dozens of unhoused people living along the banks of rivers and streams that turned into raging floodwaters.

“We thought that the death toll just in this population was going to be up in the 20s, 30s, just because of how many people camp on the rivers,” said Alanna Kinsella, homeless services director at Homeward Bound.

Read previous installments of The Lives We Lost.

Asheville Watchdog has identified three unhoused people of the 43 who perished in Buncombe from the Sept. 27 tropical storm: Jody Henderson, an Air Force veteran described by his sister as extremely loving, Calvin “Michael” McMahan, who liked to travel and preach to people he met, and Lisa Plemmons, a cook at an Asheville nursing home who was living in her car and had been featured in a previous installment of The Lives We Lost.

About five unhoused people remain unaccounted for, Kinsella said.

“Did they leave town before? Do we have their legal name? It’s really hard to know,” she said. “It could only be one or two people that are really actually missing.”

The toll on Asheville’s homeless community turned out to be lower than feared. The Asheville-Buncombe Homeless Coalition called a Code Purple beginning the morning of Sept. 26, opening shelter space for anyone who needed it and providing free bus transportation.

Teams that included community paramedics and outreach workers visited homeless encampments to warn people near water and urge them to seek shelter. Advocates were also able to spread the word about Code Purple early because of the persistent rains ahead of the storm.

At AHOPE, a day shelter run by Homeward Bound, “so many people were coming in here at that time because people needed to get dry, they needed to get supplies,” Kinsella said. “We were really able to disseminate that information really quickly.”

Many went to shelters, “and a lot of our campers really moved into the core of town,” Kinsella said.

In the weeks after the storm, advocates have been attempting to account for everyone. Asheville’s 2024 Point-In-Time count identified 739 people without housing, most in emergency shelters or transitional housing, but 219 were camping, sleeping in cars or on the street.  

The task has been difficult because some homeless people were known only by aliases or street names.

“It really took an entire community of us to come together and say, ‘Okay, I know that person’s legal name,’ or ‘I only know them by this,’“ Kinsella said. “It was a lot of really having to piece things together.

“It may be a while before we know the full scope of who all from our community, of people experiencing homelessness, have been lost.”

Here are two of their stories.

Jody Henderson

Jody Henderson’s life never was easy, but he “was one of the most loving people you would ever meet,” said his sister, Kathy Henderson Cook.

Her younger brother struggled with bipolar disorder and was often homeless and unable to work. Henderson had a high IQ and was good looking, she said, but the disease kept him hamstrung for most of his adult life.

“He had so much going for him, but he just couldn’t put that grasp on things and just stay with it,” Cook said. “He would float off, and then he would just get kind of loopy.”

Henderson, 63, died Sept. 27, swept away by Helene’s floodwaters, according to his death certificate. 

He had been staying at the Veterans Restoration Quarters on Tunnel Road in East Asheville, but Cook said he’d spent a couple of weeks at the VA hospital for mental health treatment.

On the day before Helene, Henderson was on a “weekend pass” from the VRQ and rented a cabin along the Swannanoa River at the KOA Campground. He needed a space that would accept dogs, as he didn’t want to go somewhere without his beloved mutt and emotional support dog, Bullet.

Cook said that on Sept. 27, as the river breached its banks and the water rose, her brother was standing on top of the cabin. An evacuation team had just arrived. As he often did when his situation was dire, Henderson called his sister.

“He called me at 9:17,” Cook said. 

Their conversation was short.

“He said, ‘Sis, I love you. The evac team just arrived. I’ll call you,’” Cook said. “He hung up, and he was gone.”

A witness at the campground said “it was around 10 o’clock when the building collapsed and everything went crazy,” Cook said.

Jody Nyle Henderson grew up with Cook in Chesnee, South Carolina, and had lived in California, Utah, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas before returning to Chesnee in 2018,  according to his obituary. He attended Chesnee High School and Spartanburg Community College before joining the U.S. Air Force.

He is survived by three children, Cook and another sister, Kristi Henderson Walker. A brother, Michael Kenneth Henderson, died previously.

“His final days were in a log cabin with his beloved dog Bullet by the Swannanoa River with a view of God’s beautiful creation surrounding him as he made new friends,” his obituary states. “Bullet was adopted by one of those new friends, Chelsea of Maryland, who rescued Bullet from the flooding.”

Cook said her brother easily made friends, including Chelsea, whom he met at the campground. She did not want her last name published. 

“He’d never met her. Didn’t know her, but of course, you know — two hours with Jody — best friends,” Cook said.

Cook, who called her brother “Bo,” said his death has been difficult, and she still has “moments where I tend to struggle with emotional issues.

“But as a whole, I know this was a blessing from God,” Cook said, explaining that she always worried about her brother, especially when he stopped his medications and was unhoused. 

He would end up in need and then call to come stay with her, she said.

“He would do anything for me — he just didn’t have the ability to fight the disease,” Cook said. “And I don’t hold that against him.”

She noted that her brother suffered from “tall tale syndrome,” exaggerating facts or making up stories.

She and her sister take comfort knowing that Henderson went out with a story that would normally be hard to believe, one involving a historic storm that showed immense power and swept away entire buildings. 

They’ve also taken comfort in the outpouring of support from the community, from churches to governmental agencies.

“It was a blessing to have to lose somebody and be as fortunate as we are in a community like we live in, to have people come together,” Cook said.

– John Boyle, Asheville Watchdog

Calvin “Michael” McMahan

Calvin McMahan’s sister feared the worst after Helene when she did not hear from the big brother who never went more than a few weeks without checking in.

The last she knew, McMahan, who went by his middle name, Michael, had been in Asheville, said Pamela Douthit of Bryson City. “I was wondering where he was, hoping he was okay, worried to death,” she said.

Douthit said police told the family that McMahan had drowned in the storm. His body was found Sept. 30 on Glendale Avenue along the Swannanoa River in one of the areas hardest hit by flooding.

The official cause of death was “landslide injuries,” according to his death certificate.

McMahan, 63, was the oldest of 10 children and had been unhoused for the past 15 to 20 years, his sister said.

“He lived everywhere,” she said. “He had property here in Swain County, but he wanted to travel. He wanted to visit different places, so he decided being homeless was his choice.”

McMahan liked to preach to the people he met. “He testified to people,” Douthit said. “He talked about God and how free we are and how thankful we are.”

McMahan visited his sister and her husband in Bryson City from time to time and would stay for a couple of weeks. “He said he had to do God’s work, so he went on out down the road,” she said.

McMahan had been staying under a bridge near the Swannanoa. His sister said he frequented homeless shelters in bad weather and must not have known about the dangerous flooding predicted in Helene.

“I guess it just snuck up on him. He was asleep or something,” she said. “I hate that he had to go the way he did.” 

McMahan had a son and a daughter in Florida, she said. He had been a house painter and loved the guitar, though he did not know how to play.

“Like anyone else, he made mistakes, but he tried to do the best he could do for other people,” Douthit said.

McMahan had “some trouble with the law…He changed his life, and he started working for the Lord and doing what the Lord said to do. I was proud of that,” his sister said.

“I loved him. He was a good person,” she said. “He will be missed.”

– Sally Kestin, Asheville Watchdog

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email skestin@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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