Team Rubicon: X Marked the Spot
An overgrown cemetery at St. Nicholas Bethel Baptist Church became the source of community togetherness when it brought to light a virtually unknown organization in Northeast Florida through an unusual avenue.
RJ Caster was scrolling through Twitter, now renamed X, when he saw a story about a local, historic, African American church with World War II veterans buried there. The cemetery had become so overgrown it was inaccessible. Caster, a Greyshirt volunteer with Team Rubicon, an organization dedicated to disaster response, thought it would be a great project for the newly founded Northeast Florida Chapter.
“People don’t know there’s a chapter [here],” he said.
There was no information in the post on how to help the church, so Caster commented and asked who to contact. Jill Sadowski, who ended up helping the team every weekend, responded.
“She has no ties to the church, she has no ties to Team Rubicon, she just really cares about her community,” said Caster. “She responded on Twitter and said, ‘I know Veronica at the church and can get them in touch if you really want to help out.’”
Caster then reached out to the Team Rubicon state lead, who brought together volunteers from Jacksonville, Orlando and Palm Coast for the cemetery project, which spanned five weekends in early summer 2023.
“People had been dumping stuff there. There were trees that were in there. It was like the Amazon rainforest,” he said.
“[The St. Nicholas Bethel Baptist Church project] was just really cool because it is something that started with just a comment on Twitter. It all just kind of snowballed. Where people comment usually nasty things under articles for the most part, it was kind of just a demonstration of, ‘Hey, you can actually comment and start something good, too,’”
The project is not typical for Team Rubicon, which does a lion’s share of its relief work after natural disasters, especially hurricanes.
Ahead of Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida on Aug. 30, 2023, Team Rubicon met with local leaders – city council, mayor’s office – to be sure that everyone was informed about being able to request assistance from Team Rubicon for any number of disasters, but especially hurricanes.
“We have several people here who have been through a number of different trainings, including the FEMA trainings online who are ready to get pulled together in case somebody does need their assistance,” said Caster. “If there were any sort of disasters, or just things the community needed help with, Team Rubicon is here, and there are people who are associated with the organization that can help out in these instances.”
By Lindsey Gast Pessia
Resident Community News
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