When Greg Green and his three children came home on New Years Day, they walked through their door to find their home was on fire.

“Very quickly our home was burning,” Green said.

Green, who is the principal of Calhoun Middle School, said the Calhoun Fire Department was on the scene in minutes to fight the blaze.

“If they had not done their job so well, my house would have burned to ground,” he said.

While the Green’s home was not completely destroyed, it was deemed “uninhabitable” by the fire marshal, and much of the family’s belongings were damaged beyond repair.

“I was not a good homeowner, I kept following the fire fighters into the house,” Green said.

But each time Green came back through his front door, he was greeted with neighbors, friends and acquaintances gathered on his lawn waiting to lend a hand.

“I can not believe the amount of people who came forward to help us,” Green said.

Green said the people in the community quickly flew into action, to help the family with clothes and an immediate place to stay. Fellow principal, Wanda Westmoreland of Calhoun High, even left her son’s wedding rehearsal dinner to pick up Green’s children.

While the community was busy gathering round to support the family, Green’s wife Alice was franticly making her way back home from a visit with family in Alabama.

“My priority was to make sure my wife got in to see her house, then we could go from there,” he said.

Green said while he and his wife were wondering what their next move would be, friends and neighbors were coming up with a plan of action.

Jan and Tony Lindsey, teachers at Calhoun High School, offered up the Greens a place to stay, giving them temporary residence in a home in Adairsville.

“That night started a string of things,” Green said. “It is really hard to stand there and watch your stuff burn, but I knew as it was happening we would be okay. I knew we would have somewhere to go.”

Green said that while they were mentally reeling from their home being destroyed, friends were busy using such tools as Facebook, where Calhoun City Schools Superintendent Michele Taylor was organizing donations to the family.

Talyor said she was overwhelmed by the response she and the Greens received.

“People responded and many volunteered who didn’t know the Greens but wanted to lend their support. We are truly blessed to live in a community where everyone truly cares about the needs of others,” Taylor said.

“We walked into a fully furnished house, people brought over bags of clothes, and food and toilet paper,” Green said.

Green said what touched him the most was the strangers who came to help.

“There were people we didn’t even know,” Green said. “One man said to me, ‘I just read this on Facebook and wanted to help.’”

While Green is counting his blessings, he also acknowledges that there are many people who don’t have the support system that Green does.

“I knew as it was happening that it would all be paid for by insurance and all we had to do was survive,” Green said. “But there are people who go through that and they don’t have insurance and all they are left with is the clothes on their backs.”

Green, who sits on the board of the Voluntary Action Center, said he now has a greater understanding of what the philanthropic organizations in Gordon County do.

“We are going to make it,” Green said. “This is a very giving community, this all came out of the community.”

Green said that the family has lived in the home for 11 years, and they will rebuild.

“Just the other week I was writing a Sunday School lesson for church and the question was ‘have you ever seen God in action?’ Before that was something I had to think about, I don’t have to think about it anymore,” Green said.

While Green says that his family has hundreds of people to thank he acknowledges he could never thank them all enough. As a way to give back to the community that rallied around his family Green says when his family reaches a stable point and rebuilds he is turning the donations he received over to the Trinity Baptist Church “burn closet.” Those donations will be used should another family be faced with such devastation.

“There are just good folks in this town,” Green said. “Strangers who decided to make a difference in the lives of my family.”

Green knows it will take time to rebuild, and in the present he is thanking God for the safety of his family.

“This is a bump in the road,” he said. “But it isn’t really a big bump because of all the help we received.”