As soon as Matt Spitzer learned a large tornado had struck a nearby town, he jumped into action. Matt, a junior at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, quickly recruited all the friends he could find. The group piled into cars to drive the 40-some miles to Fairdale, Illinois.
When Matt and his friends arrived in the small farming town, they saw a community in crisis.
“All the houses were in some way damaged or destroyed,” he said.
Initially authorities weren’t letting anyone into the center of the town, so Matt and his group began driving around the perimeter of the town, searching for a way to help. That’s when they noticed a lot of debris in a field where a house was destroyed.
“We pulled over and just started cleaning up — picking up anything that didn’t belong,” he said. “That’s when I stumbled upon a huge American flag.”
Someone snapped a photo of Matt holding up the enormous flag, wearing his trusty Levi’s® jeans.
“I’ve been wearing Levi’s jeans for quite some time now and have not worn a more comfortable and durable brand of jeans in my life,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better pair of jeans to clean up in. They withstood a lot of dirt and debris and cuts from metal fragments, and after putting them through the wash they came out looking brand new.”
Matt and his friends came back every day for the next week to help with the grueling work of cleaning up the destruction. Luckily, his Levi’s® were up to the tough task.
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