Tell Us Who Helped You Get Through the Storm

A year ago, writing his inaugural Character Study column, Corey Kilgannon profiled Ed Shevlin, a New York City sanitation worker from the Rockaways who is one of the city's leading speakers of Irish, the Gaelic language.

This week, he catches up with Mr. Shevlin, who for the foreseeable future is assigned to the immense cleanup in his neighborhood: clearing battered sections of the Boardwalk where he played as a child, and carting away contents of friends' houses to the parking lot of Jacob Riis Park, which has been turned into a temporary dump.

Hurricane Sandy's effects seem to have permeated New York City so deeply that nearly every one of the 50 or so New Yorkers who have been featured in the column has had a telling hurricane experience. There was good fortune for A J Gogia, who runs a school for taxi drivers in Queens and kept gas in his tank because students who work at gas stations brought him cans of it, like apples for the teacher.

There was the wistful resiliency of Otto Mond, the 80-year-old Manhattan man who planned on running his 19th New York City Marathon. With the race canceled, he went for a casual four-mile jog and vowed to “get 'em next year.” There was worry, as in the case of Helen Hays, who monitors the tern populations on Gull Island, off the tip of Long Island, where the battering waves destroyed part of the dock (she remained on the comparatively safer island of Manhattan).

There was the sly resourcefulness practiced by Pete Caldera, the sportswriter and Sinatra singer. His apartment in Murray Hill lost power, so he had to write his articles at a local bar, something Ol' Blue Eyes would have endorsed.

We are inviting readers to share their stories of how the people around them made it through the storm - people who stepped up to lead recovery efforts, who weathered the dire conditions in one of the region's blacked-out areas, or even those lost to the s torm. Share yours in the comments area below.