Former MSU Lady Bear grateful for support following Hurricane Helene

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Yesterday, OzarksFirst brought you the story of how former Missouri State Lady Bear Coach Cheryl Burnett took to social media to raise money for Kinga Kiss-Johnson , her former player from the famous 2001 Final Four team, after Hurricane Helene impacted her home in South Carolina.

Today, OzarksFirst is speaking to Kiss-Johnson.

“This past first week, we had estimated 100 mph winds, and we had over 17 inches of rain just in my location. It was scary. I’ve been through tornadoes in the Midwest, but those tornado sounds didn’t even come close to [this]. 4 a.m., I woke up and I just heard really crazy rattling on my window and I got up, and my husband out of bed about 20 minutes after I got up because I kept hearing the winds. At that time we just lost power,” Kiss-Johnson said. “We were sitting in the living room. The wind was wrapping around our house. It sounded like my little chimney was going to come through the living room. It was literally dumping on us till about 6:30 when we finally just got deathly silence from all the noise.”

Kiss-Johnson and her husband Bill moved to McCormick, South Carolina after an injury during her time in the military.

“After I graduated, after 9/11 happened and got my first job down in Florida, and I’ve seen mothers and fathers deploying back to back. I come from a military family, but I felt like I had to step up and give back. I came to the U.S. and got my education and played basketball. It’s my turn to give back, so I joined the U.S. Army and it was something that I wanted to do,” Kiss-Johnson said.

“We are only 30 miles north of Augusta, Georgia, on the South Carolina border. We moved here because when I got injured in Afghanistan, I was doing all my medical treatments at Eisenhower Army Medical Center, which is in Augusta, Georgia. We wanted to stay close to a Veterans Affairs hospital as close as possible, but still live outside of the city. That’s how we found this little piece of paradise out here,” said Kiss-Johnson.

It’s an area she didn’t expect a hurricane to come through.

“This place is a very beautiful place, except these past two weeks, but it is a beautiful, calm area of South Carolina. We are really inland,” Kiss-Johnson said. “We are almost 150 miles inland out near Sumter National Forest. We usually get small winds here or there, but we get a wind storm [every once in awhile], but nothing more than 30-40 mile an hour winds.”

She says the recovery continues around her.

“There’s a lot of people without power because they can’t get to them or there’s still so many trees down. They’re trying as much as they can to get the power with the transformers back up and running. We had six days without power, but other people still don’t. I spoke to a lady today at the grocery store and was saying that she still doesn’t have power and we are the smallest and poorest county of state of South Carolina,” Kiss-Johnson said. “It’s such a small county and the declaration for FEMA was not done till the sixth, I believe. It was hard to get any answers or any help or is just going through the system. Our linemen did do a really good job. We have a nursing home near us that they did a really amazing job keeping the pretty much the transformers and put up the power as soon as they could.”

That’s when she learned Coach Burnett was getting the GoFundMe together for the damages and financial impacts Hurricane Helene left behind.

“We are truly blessed and we have a lot of prayers going up for us. We are all prayer warriors around here. All the prayers are coming true, so I am thankful and humbled. Thank you,” Kiss-Johnson said. “We still don’t know what will be covered, insurance might able to get to us as of now, it looks like until November.”

She says her relationship with Burnett has extended past the hardwood.

“It was a fun time. It’s like Coach Burnett was always our team mom. She’s still that team mom,” Kiss-Johnson said. “After I left Springfield, life took me on different directions, but we still kept in touch. Missouri was my first home here in the U.S. so it’s always will be.”

Kiss-Johnson says the money raised would go towards immediate needs.

“[We’re] trying to replace a few things that we can and then plan for the future. We’re really trying planning to somehow get a home generator because I have medical devices that have to run and I’m using daily. I lost my medications, four weeks’ worth of medication because the fridge and the freezer went out,” Kiss-Johnson said. “My doctor just refilled all my medications on Monday, replacing my medications that needed to be refrigerated. We are really looking to see if we can get enough funds together that we get a generator, so in the future we don’t get so much unexpected loss that is hard to replace really quickly.”

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