Hope from behind the lens

There’s a story behind this now-famous photo. Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteer Brent Trumbo, who was serving as a crew leader for two weeks in Barre, Vermont, decided to take the picture at the end of a long day mucking out a flooded basement. 

Trumbo, from Broadway, Virginia, attends Harrisonburg Mennonite Church, and is a longtime MDS volunteer. 

On July 29, he was working with Old Order Mennonite volunteers from Dayton, Virginia, and the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania area.

“I was dumbfounded when I saw what they were doing,” he said. The women, most of whom were in their early 20s, were using shovels to fill five-gallon buckets with mud, then carrying them, one in each hand, out of the basement of a 200-year-old home that had been inundated with river mud.

“They were carrying about 40 pounds in each hand,” he said. “They did this for hours on end with no stopping and no slowing down.”

And they were singing while they worked. “Their harmony was phenomenal,” said Trumbo. “You could have made a recording in that basement.”

Trumbo marveled at the beautiful singing that rose up out of the mud in that basement. “It was a nasty environment,” he said. “We put some temporary lights down there but it was dark. It didn’t smell good.”

But the conditions didn’t seem to phase the women at all. So he joined in the work.

“They literally about killed me!” joked Trumbo, who is 65. “I was trying to keep up with them. I did have to take a couple of ibuprofen.”

All kidding aside, Trumbo recalls getting a little teary-eyed on his last day on the job, which was August 2.

“These were young people who were so hardworking. They were humble. They were very friendly and they’d come over and chat with me for 20 minutes very comfortably,” he said. “They restored my hope in the next generation. That’s genuinely the way I feel. I get very emotional when I talk about it.”

He had no idea the photo would be viewed by thousands on Facebook and Instagram. It got so popular that some people falsely claimed it must have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

“People thought this was someone getting creative with AI!” said Trumbo, who would like to assure people that he’s a real human being.

Who’s not in the photograph? The homeowner, a man who periodically brought snacks and drinks down into the basement for the volunteers, and had a look of stunned surprise when he saw the work being accomplished. 

“As we were leaving, I was pulling out, I noticed that he had walked out into the yard and had just sat in a lawn chair—and it appeared like he was crying,” said Trumbo. “I am sure he was just in shock. It was a very touching moment.”