Doyel: A flood of donated water is flowing from Fishers to Flint, Mich.

Gregg Doyel
IndyStar
Josh Helvie,left, helps Mike Jueneman,right, remove 18 packages of water at the AAU basketball tournament at the Best Choice Fieldhouse in Fishers. Josh Helvie, Midwest Circuit AAU organizer,  began a drive to collect bottles of drinking water for The Flint Town Elite, from Flint Mi., 5th grade boys basketball team on Saturday April 21, 2018. The steady stream of people donating water has been nonstop. Two moving trucks and a semi trailer are nearly full of drinking water for the people of Flint.

FISHERS – The cars keep coming, one after another, like that scene from “Field of Dreams.” Here’s an SUV. A Civic. Now a Chevy Cruze. The cars are pulling up to the semi-trailer parked next to Best Choice Fieldhouse, and people are hopping out. Old people. Young. Black people. White. They have one thing in common: They are carrying cases of bottled water.

“It’s been non-stop since early this morning,” Josh Helvie is telling me, and the idea was his, but the execution has been yours.

Inside the fieldhouse, kids are playing an AAU basketball tournament. There are 76 teams in all, boys in fifth grade and seventh grade, but the cars keep coming because of the two teams from Flint, Michigan. These teams have boys who won’t, who can’t, drink their water at home. Some won’t take showers, not the usual kind anyway. Not with water flowing through the same pipes that coursed for years with contaminated water from the Flint River, causing eczema and other rashes. They’ll shower with bottles of water, or they won’t shower at all.

It’s been this way for almost four years. It’s called the Flint Water Crisis. Even has its own social media hashtag: #FlintWaterCrisis.

A kid can’t drink a hashtag.

So Josh Helvie had this idea. He runs the Midwest Circuit, a series of AAU events in Ohio and Indiana, and he decided to turn this weekend’s tournament in Fishers into an outreach. It started with a single tweet from Midwest Circuit, an account with a few hundred followers: Free admission Friday night at Best Choice Fieldhouse; donations of water will be accepted.

AAU basketball players, their families and other members of the public drop off packages of water at the AAU basketball tournament at the Best Choice Fieldhouse in Fishers. Josh Helvie, Midwest Circuit AAU organizer,  began a drive to collect bottles of drinking water for The Flint Town Elite, from Flint Mi., 5th grade boys basketball team on Saturday April 21, 2018. The steady stream of people donating water has been nonstop. Two moving trucks and a semi trailer are nearly full of drinking water for the people of Flint.

“I have a custom van for my team,” says Helvie, a Zionsville financial advisor who coaches his son’s seventh-grade team in the Indiana Elite program. “I thought we’d fill that with maybe 20 cases (of water), and drive it to Flint.

“Then we got some feedback.”

People were tweeting about it. Instagram posts were popping up. The newspaper wrote a story.

“So, Best Choice Fieldhouse said they’d donate a U-Haul,” Helvie says, continuing the timeline of a story that is so wonderful, it doesn’t seem possible. “I thought we’d get a medium-sized truck and drive that to Flint. Then we got some more feedback.”

Helvie is talking to me from the opening of a 55-foot semi-trailer, the kind you see on the interstate. It’s maybe half-full of water, cases stacked against the back wall and fanning outward. It’s an impressive sight, and I’m asking Helvie how much water he thinks is in here. If I’m going to write this story, I need to quantify it. What are we looking at? How many bottles of water are in this trailer?

“Well, I don’t know,” Helvie says, and hops down from the truck. “This isn’t the full one.”

This isn’t the … what?

Helvie walks to another trailer, another 55-footer from the looks of it, and pulls open the doors. If water were gold, and in Flint it is, we’d be blinded. Because this trailer is full, a testimony to the Indianapolis, and the Indiana, that we know and love. Show this place a cause, and it rallies behind it. So now I’m repeating my question: What are we looking at? How many bottles of water?

“Well,” Helvie says again, “I don’t know.

“We filled one truck already. It’s headed to Flint.”

* * *

These out-of-town AAU tournaments, they’re the best. That’s what Timontae Boyd is saying, because he can drink from any water faucet he wants, and he can take a real shower, not the bottled-water showers he’s been taking for almost four years back home in Flint.

Timontae is a seventh-grader on the Flint Town Elite Runnin’ Rebels. He’s telling me it’s not so bad at home, though; he has the bottled-water shower down to a science:

“Five bottles,” he says. “Maybe six.”

Christopher McLavish coaches his Flint Town Elite team as they play OH Dose, from Ohio at the Best Choice Fieldhouse in Fishers. Josh Helvie, Midwest Circuit AAU organizer,  began a drive to collect bottles of drinking water for The Flint Town Elite, from Flint Mi., 5th grade boys basketball team on Saturday April 21, 2018. The steady stream of people donating water has been nonstop. Two moving trucks and a semi trailer are nearly full of drinking water for the people of Flint.

State government officials recently declared the water clean, and are stopping the bottled-water program.

“The pipes are still messed up,” says Boyd’s teammate, Amont’e Allen-Johnson, and Boyd is nodding.

“People are still scared to take showers,” he says.

But the state says your water is clean, I say, playing devil’s advocate, and now a third member of the team joins the conversation.

“It’s supposed to be clean,” says Jaylen Johnson, making quotation marks with his fingers, “but as soon as it goes through the pipes, it’s dirty again.”

We’re sitting on the bleachers inside the fieldhouse, watching the Flint program’s fifth-graders play. Outside, the semi-trailers are filling up. I’m asking these kids from Flint: Do you know what’s happening out there? Boyd is nodding. He’s about 6-2, wears black-rimmed glasses, already has 3-point range and a killer crossover. But he’s just a boy. A seventh-grader. He’s talking softly.

“We’re thankful,” he says. “It’s nice to know people care.”

* * *

Two of the boys in the Flint program have lead poisoning. They’ve been tested. They know. Runnin’ Rebels coach Chris McLavish is sure other boys have it. He knows the signs: Stomach cramps, diarrhea. He’s seen kids leave practice, run out of the gym. He knows where they’re going. He knows why.

“A lot of people don’t want to know if they’re sick,” he says. “What good will it do, you know? You have to get through it no matter what.”

McLavish’s son is on the fifth-grade team: Chris Jr. Tiny kid, thick glasses, bushy hair, great handle. A few minutes earlier, I’d been watching the clock tick down in the first half as Chris Jr. jukes one kid, then another, then lofts a floater that beats the buzzer. On the sideline, his father claps once. Can’t get too excited. There’s another half to play.

“I haven’t had (my son) tested,” he says. “We don’t want to know.”

Chris Porter,right, takes in bottles of water at the AAU basketball tournament at the Best Choice Fieldhouse in Fishers. Josh Helvie, Midwest Circuit AAU organizer,  began a drive to collect bottles of drinking water for The Flint Town Elite, from Flint Mi., 5th grade boys basketball team on Saturday April 21, 2018. The steady stream of people donating water has been nonstop. Two moving trucks and a semi trailer are nearly full of drinking water for the people of Flint.

They are all victims, of awful luck and poor governmental oversight and now of disregard – the state moving on, deciding the water is clean and there is nothing to see here, so just shut up and ignore those tarnished pipes – but that is not how they define themselves. That’s why so many kids in Flint probably have lead poisoning but don’t know it. It doesn’t come from negligence, but from wells of inner strength: They refuse to be tested, because they don’t want to be told they are victims. What good will it do, you know?

McLavish was born and raised in Flint, a graduate of Flint Northwestern High, a point guard who won two city titles and played at South Alabama and came home to run a basketball program for the kind of hungry, tough kids that Flint produces. Tattoos start at McLavish’s wrist and run up his arm, disappearing under his shirt sleeve and reappearing near his neck. Everything about Chris McLavish – his face, his body, his demeanor – looks hard. But I’m asking him about the water piling up outside, and he reveals softness.

“We got here (Friday) night, and there were stacks of water waiting,” he says. “My boys were out here until 10 p.m. loading one of the trucks with kids on other teams – teams we’ve played and beaten, teams who beat us. It’s not about basketball whatsoever. It’s about humanity, helping the next man.

“It just shows how …”

McLavish pauses. Tears are filling his eyes.

“It just shows how, even in the U.S. where we have lots of issues, people can come together,” he says. “I’m speechless. Speechless.”

* * *

One woman shows up in a Cadillac. She looks about 80, and rolls the car right up to the trailer and pops the trunk. Josh Helvie walks over and pulls out a case of water. The woman waves and drives off.

Now a kid is walking over, a seventh-grader on the ITPS Sports team from Pittsburgh. He’s carrying a case of water. I get his name: Tyler Blatz. He hands the water to Helvie, who yells out, “Thank you!”

Tyler, walking back to the parking lot, looks over his shoulder.

“Ten cases more in the car,” he says.

What’s happening here, you can’t imagine it. Unless you could imagine a 9-year-old girl on the southside, a girl turning 10 this weekend. Her name is Ava Southers, and she’s a fourth-grader at Nativity Catholic School. She loves archery and kickball. Ava’s talking to her step-dad, who tells her about the kids from Flint, kids who use bottled water to brush their teeth. Ava knows she has some birthday money coming. She tells her dad she wants to use it to buy bottles of water for Flint.

Ava Southers, a Nativity Catholic Grade School pupil, turned 10 this weekend. She used some of her birthday money to buy water for families in Flint, Mich.

“Kids are the best,” says her step-dad, Ryan Mahin.

Adults can be, too. Rob Hoover coaches in the Indiana Elite program, and every time he comes back to his house in Franklin Township, he finds another five or 10 cases of water on his porch.

“Thirty or 35, total,” Hoover says, “and most of it, I have no idea who gave them. I was at Kroger and telling the manager about what we’re doing, and he says: ‘I’ll give you 10 cases.’ I wasn’t asking for it; he just offered. Same thing happened at Chick-Fil-A. I’m there for lunch: ‘We’ll give you five.’”

From his original goal of maybe 20 cases of water – at 24 bottles per case, that’s about 500 bottles altogether – Josh Helvie decided to get crazy and readjust the goal to 18,000. Who knows? When they filled the first trailer, Sam’s Club donated the truck and driver. Millennial Transport Services donated a truck and a driver for another trailer. Jay’s Moving Company provided two trucks, two drivers.

So I’m asking Helvie, as we’re standing inside the fieldhouse, watching Flint’s fifth-graders: Are you close to 18,000?

“I bet we have 50,000 right now,” he says. “The new goal is 100,000.”

As we’re talking, his phone is pinging. It’s the guys outside, loading the trailers. They’re texting Helvie pictures: a line of cars, cases of water. We head outside as a man drives up. He gets out of his car, introduces himself as Scott Callaghan. He’s a high school English teacher in Akron, Ohio, and will be coaching his seventh-grade son this weekend at Fishers.

“We competed against Flint a few weeks ago,” Callaghan is saying. “At the time, our kids didn’t know what was going on up there. They do now. Every one of them brought a case of water.”

Helvie is standing nearby. His phone is pinging again. Always with the pinging.

“You’ve got to see this,” Helvie says, and shows me his phone. It’s a text message from someone named Terry Strong:

“I have a truck load of water. Are the trucks still there?”

Yes they are. Until Sunday at 5 p.m.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.