Motorists were stranded all over Shelby County, but those stuck on Highway 25 had a lot of help.

Two men who lived near the area, Jerry Hill, Sr., and his son Jerry Hill, Jr., were out hunting when the snow began to fall.

“We knew there were fixing to be problems,” he said as they saw how much the snow was sticking to the roads.

The Hills jumped on their Rhino and helped ferry the stranded motorists to warmth.

Jerry Hill, Jr., even gave one trucker and his wife a ride to Sylacauga where their child had come home from school to find the house empty, his father said.

Officer Waldrop of Harpersville was on the scene helping as well, Hill reported, as well as other neighbors, the Hortons and the Lansfords. The families gave food and supplies to the motorists.

“One of the truckers got on the phone with his family and said, ‘If something were to happen to me, it couldn’t have happened in a better place than Wilsonville, Alabama,’” Hill said.

On Wednesday, Jan. 29, the neighborhood men worked to reopen a section of Highway 25 between Harpersville and Wilsonville that had been blocked for nearly 24 hours.

Rodney Decker, who is the operator of Beyond Landscape and Design, had just received a brand-new Bobcat on Monday and used it to pull the 18-wheeler out of the ditch and on its way.

“I was just trying to help people out,” he said. “I went down there and saw that people needed help. They (the truck drivers) were from out of state and had been there for over 18 hours. I couldn’t just leave.”