American Express Program

Jennifer Dellinger received an unusual phone call from her director, Sharon Rodgers, at 5:30 in the morning, and when her husband answered the phone, all she heard was "you're kidding." He told her that she didn't have to go to work today, the building had caught fire.

When she returned to work on Tuesday morning, she discovered that many personal - and irreplaceable - items were missing. For instance, a frame containing several photos was gone. The missing frame had held a photo of her father, at age 2, with all of his brothers and his mother. She also lost several pictures that her 5-year-old daughter had drawn for her.

Along with all of the accounts payable employees, Dellinger first moved to the Frye Computer Lab and then to One Court Square about three weeks later.

Dellinger's job is to question and audit expenditures on the American Express card and perform on-site audits. However, after the fire, she decided to put the auditing on hold for a while and concentrate on organizing the thousands of files and vouchers that came out of the fire, as well as to help her colleagues with copying and making a fire recovery list to send to the procurement office. All of this took up so much time that the audits she had planned to have done by now fell by the wayside, so she is "working harder to get them done" now that her office is settled in One Court Square.

She would like to thank "everyone on the JMU campus. The employees in Frye Lab were so nice and welcoming to us when we were there, and all the people in facilities management have been so helpful getting all our stuff moved and helping us pull stuff out of the [burned] building. We have received food from all over campus. We have received copies of invoices, etc., that we couldn't find after the fire. Everyone showed the all together one spirit though this fire, and it shows what quality people we have at this university."