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Oakwood Students Helping Console Students at Virginia Tech [April 23, 2007]

One week after the worst shooting massacre in U.S. history, students and faculty went back to class in Blacksburg, Virginia, and students from Huntsville were there helping them to push forward.

A band from Oakwood College was in Virginia Tech to provide the campus with some consolation this morning.
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Pittsburg Post-Gazette: Virginia Tech Journal [April 23, 2007]

"I look at these people as my brothers and sisters," said Mr. Cross, 24, a senior at Oakwood College in Alabama. "When 9/11 happened, we did the same thing. We said, 'you know, this could have been us.' "
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Planet Blacksburg: Media Presence Annoys Mourners Gathered To Honor Victims Monday [April 23, 2007]

Media stationed themselves on the sidewalk in front of East Ambler Johnston, pointing their cameras toward about 20 marching members of The National Association for the Prevention of Starvation (NAPS), a non-profit volunteer relief organization started in Alabama that was on hand to mark the occasion.
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The Huntsville Times [April 9, 1999]

"Students seek spare change for Kosovo victims; May stopped to plunk coins and small bills into boxes marked "Kosovo" for hundreds of thousands of faraway refugees without shelter, family or food.. .Oakwood college students... were at Wal-Mart on a matter of poverty, not politics, as volunteers with the National Association for the Prevention of Starvation."

Birmingham Post-Herald: Saints went marching in [October 2, 2001]

Saints went marching in: Oakwood College student Daniella Payne, 19, left, hugs the wife of a missing New York firefighter outside Station No. 1. Nearly half of the station's firefighters were lost in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11. Payne and friends traveled from Alabama to New York the weekend following the attacks to try and lift spirits with song.
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Newsweek: The Aftermath [October 2, 2001]

New York Times: Editorial Observer [September 17, 2001]

On Saturday, two women who said they were nieces of Ezra Aviles, a 41- year-old senior manager who worked at the Trade Center, were in the park with their children, holding up his picture. It had "Please come home'~ written on it. All of a sudden, a band appeared, marching down Fifth Ave- nue into the park playing "God Bless America." After the World Trade Center fell, students from Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., threw some shovels and garbage bags and their instruments into a bus and headed north, looking to help. "We traveled about 24 hours to get here," explained Dr. Gregory Mims,. one of the chaperones. He said the students were members of the Nationaf Asso- ciation to Prevent. Starvation and that they had been sleeping in a1 church basement in the Bronx.
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Rich Lowery: The Band Marches In - A joyful noise in the streets of New York City [September 16, 2001]

It turned out they were from Oakwood College in Hunstville, Alabama. Someone had had the inspired idea to drive 24 hours to come here and raise a joyful noise in the streets of New York City. What a sight! A kid held an American flag at the front of the group, and a couple of others held shovels over their shoulders. After all the sadness, the prayer vigils and the candles, here was something clamorous and happy and resolute (and even a little martial). This is what we needed, even if no one had realized it until this noisy apparition appeared among us, conducting the normal business of a New York Saturday — walking our dogs, carrying plastic grocery bags, strolling idly toward brunch--but with the pall of downtown muting everything.
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Huntsville Times: Students seek spare change for Kosovo victims [April 9, 1999]

The Washington Post: African American Students Bring Christmas to a Village in Sudan [December 26, 1998]