Just incredible.
Today, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had Cleetus McFarland as a guest on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and if his name sounds familiar but you don’t exactly know who he is, he helped out a ton during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina.
Along with NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, they flew supplies in their helicopters for days getting to hard-to-reach places in the mountains that were in dire need with no water, power or even homes and roads in many cases. I think we’ve all seen all of the photos and videos of the disaster zone it was there after Hurricane Helene, and honestly, even now in so many places. The damages and destruction will take years to recover from, but so many have lost things, and people, that obviously they can never get back or have replaced, which is the real tragedy.
Cleetus’ real name is Lawrence Garrett Mitchell, and he competes part-time in the ARCA Menards Series, driving the #30 Ford for Rette Jones Racing. He also has a very popular Youtube channel, where he puts out a lot of content about his love for helicopters and that type of thing, in addition to racing.
Right as Hurricane Helene was hitting WNC, Cleetus and his wife, who live in Florida, were preparing to fly his new helicopter to dinner when he got a call about potentially needing help in the mountains once the weather subsided. He could tell his wife wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of him being gone for several days, so he told her to come with him and they’d go to dinner somewhere in North Carolina, just in case.
Compassionate and empathetic Americans do what they do best and organize to help their fellow citizens.
Private helicopter pilot Cleetus McFarland, his wife, and NASCAR Busch series champion Greg Biffle collaborated to evacuate those in need after Hurricane Helene, delivering… pic.twitter.com/d4Ro1CGMjj
— Jeff Schilly (@El_Jefe_Schilly) October 4, 2024
Like so many others in the NASCAR community, they stepped up and ended up staying for days, delivering supplies like water, food and insulin to some of the most remote places, and Dale Jr. asked him about some of the stories that stuck with him and really affected him while he was on the scene.
Cleetus told Jr. he would try to get through it without getting choked up like he usually does when he talks about his experience. Cleetus first talked about Cattail Creek, a community Southeast of Burnsville, another town that was hit extremely hard by the hurricane, and community members had asked him to take his helicopter up to see if there were any people out on their decks or roofs that needed help, since this was the Sunday after the hurricane hit and they hadn’t seen anyone outside of their community hit, and didn’t have power or cell service yet.
Cleetus quickly realized there were no houses left:
“I’ll try not to get choked up, when I talk about it, I do but maybe I’ll be fine right now. Cattail Creek is a spot out there, and man, those guys just got drug down so bad. We were the first people they had seen, and I remember all the people at the fire station when we landed… we were the first people they had seen since, I think it happened Friday morning and we were there Sunday.
And they they asked me to go up and look at some of these houses, and see if there was people on the porch or whatever, and I remember flying and there just wasn’t any houses. And those moments were hard man, like, it was sad. But we just continued to help people and it was okay, you know, we just did what we could and I think it was pretty cool working with some of the people that really busted their butts to help others up the hill.”
One of my favorite, more positive stories he told was about a man who he’d asked for help clearing a spot for him to land in a pretty remote area. He had first landed on the property in a very tight area, and knew when he came back he’d need more room.
Cleetus asked a man to clear him a bigger spot up on the hill, and when he came back an hour later, he’d cleared a full square acre of land for him to land his helicopter on. Of course, it was a life or death situation for so many, and I think it goes to show the true Appalachian spirit and how so many people stepped up during this horrific time… need a full square acre cleared out in an hour? Call a mountain man, I promise…
That’s something that would normally take a single person days, or probably weeks to do. Impressive doesn’t even begin to describe it:
“I remember when we landed, I asked a guy to go clear more space because I had just landed in a spot that was like so tight. and I’m like guys, I know, they’re putting Xs on the road… we landed, it was so freaking tight. and I said, ‘Brother go open up a spot up the hill.’
I came back, this guy had cut down like a square acre. I was like, how did this guy do this in an hour? People were going above and beyond, because it was a literal life or death situation. That’s just one of the many crazy things we saw.”
Dale asked if they still get tons of people thanking him for everything, especially those who were either directly affected, or had family members who he’d helped, and he was extremely humble in his response, saying there were “no thank you’s needed,” and that he’d do it again in a heartbeat, just like all his other pilot friends would:
“There’s been a few, definitely a lot of indirect, a few direct. We were on the news in Miami for taking just a Florida couple up that was at their vacation home, and random stuff. But I’ve never done anything in my life that I’ve been thanked so much for [as much as] the North Carolina helicopter flying, which is for sure not our intention. We didn’t go there for this, and you know, Greg and I talk about it all the time, like, it is mind blowing that still today, even at Daytona, so many people came out to Greg and said that.
We obviously appreciated everyone’s thank you’s, but helicopter pilots will fly for any reason pretty much. If my neighbor’s dog is missing, I’ll probably fly, because I just love to get it out. Especially if we get a mission where we can help people, like any of us pilots, I think I speak for all helicopter pilots, we just love flying. So no thank you needed, we’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Like so many others, Cleetus, Biffle and tons of people from all over the country stepped up for WNC in a time of dire need, and it’s great to see Dale Jr. shining a spotlight on that, because they deserve it and as bad as it all was and is, it could’ve been so much worse for so many had they not stepped up.
You can watch him talk about it here:
The post Cleetus McFarland Recalls Man Clearing A Full Acre In Less Than An Hour So He Could Land A Helicopter After Hurricane Helene: “People Were Going Above & Beyond” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.