News : Tragedy, experience prepare AmeriCorps team leaders for Class 17

These 25 AmeriCorps team leaders have begun training for Class 17 at the Vinton campus.

Vincent Scudella of Canon City, Colo., gave the closing speech when he completed his term of service at the AmeriCorps NCCC campus in Charleston, S.C., in the spring of 2006.

He had arrived at that campus in August of 2005, not knowing the challenges that would await. Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, changing the plans for AmeriCorps teams based at the campus many nicknamed "Chuck." One of the team leaders, Amanda Reese, became suddenly ill and died while leading a project in Florida. And during that year, AmeriCorps members learned their campus would be closing.

"With such debilitating and head-spinning events, some people from outside our program might wonder how a program like could might handle such adversity," Scudella told his peers in the spring of 2007. "Well, we not only handled such adversity, but we wrestled it to the ground and we pinned it." Here's his whole speech. [VIDEO]

AmeriCorps members, he said, do not walk the walk. "We run the walk," he told his peers during that speech.

Scudella told Vinton Today that he has wanted to be an AmeriCorps team leader ever since he was one of those Class 12 AmeriCorps members working through that difficult year.

And now, he is.

Scudella is just one of 25 new team leaders who arrived in Vinton this week, guided by their experience and their desire to help AmeriCorps help others throughout America. (The Charleston Campus did eventually close; the director of that campus, Jody Burns, is now the director of the Vinton campus.)

Nasthassia Donoho is from Portland, Ore, home of the Ducks. Philip Grantham is from Sooner Country -- Norman, Okla. Together, the two new friends stood before a camera in the Hawkeye State on Thursday morning, talking about the paths that led them to Iowa. They share similar goals for joining AmeriCorps as team leaders: They want to help others while improving their personal leadership skills.

D.J. Bernat, 24, of Danielson, Conn., who has a degree in journalism, was an AmeriCorps member at the Vicksburg, Mississippi campus. He said he has relatives in the Ohio and Wisconsin and looks forward to learning more about life in the Midwest.

Kelly Mattingly, 25, of Loogootee, Ind., was an AmeriCorps Vista disaster services specialist working with the Red Cross in Indiana before joining the AmeriCorps NCCC program.

These new faces -- and 20 more -- are among the changes have come to the AmeriCorps campus at the Iowa Braille School facility in Vinton.

The administrative offices have moved from the third floor of the main building to Palmer Hall. The members of Class 16, the Maple Unit, are finishing their final weeks of service and will graduate in February.

And now, the new team leaders for Class 17 -- they are sometimes called the "Green Shirts" in AmeriCorps lingo -- have arrived.

When Class 17 begins in March of this year, the campus will, for the first time in its history in Vinton, have all three units, Maple, Oak and Cedar, beginning their service at the same time. There will be 250 members sworn in for their induction ceremony.

The team leaders arrived in Vinton this week and have begun their training. The field team leaders will each direct a group of 10-15 members that travel to various places to complete a variety of projects. They have not yet been assigned a specific team. The support team leaders will work at the Vinton campus, helping to organize the units.

"It's exciting," said Region Director Dan Milnes, as he stood near his new office Thursday afternoon.