BLUEFIELD, W.Va. — A number of volunteers and celebrities with ties to the Mountain State will come together for a few hours this weekend to help raise some funds and draw support for the flood-torn areas of Southern West Virginia and across the Appalachia.
The “Helping Hands, Healing Hearts” Telethon will be broadcast live online at Two Virginias One Mission’s website this Saturday March 8 from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. The group will be joining local broadcasters at WVVA-TV to air the telethon in their studios. 
Promotor Burke Allen joined actor, producer and Princeton, West Virginia-native Kevin Sizemore on 580 Live Wednesday to get the word out about the effort.
Allen said the flood victims in McDowell, Mingo, Wyoming, Mercer and other southern West Virginia counties and beyond need all of the support they can get following the devastating mid-February floods.
“We saw these Facebook pages but there was no national coverage of how awful that flooding was across the thirteen county swath down there, and you know, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, even parts of southern Virginia, we just kept seeing it and we couldn’t not jump in to help,” Allen said.
Sizemore will be helping to co-host the telethon alongside New York Times bestselling author and McDowell County-native Homer Hickam who wrote “Rocket Boys” that was made into the hit film October Sky, as well as America’s Got Talent winner and Logan County-native Landau Eugene Murphy Jr.
Sizemore of the tv shows Chicago Fire and Under the Dome said Mercer County and southern West Virginia are home and he feels like it’s his duty to help the people there using the platform he was given.
“This is my hometown, this is my home state, this is the people that I grew up with, it’s, you know, where I got my roots,” Sizemore said. “And I want to make sure that if can do anything, I want to try and do something.”
Other celebrities taking part in the telethon this Saturday will include American Idol champion Noah Thompson, the Davisson Brothers Band, classic tv stars Donny Most from Happy Days and Julie McCullough from Growing Pains and Sharknado, and various other big names.
Sizemore said the telethon will not just be beamed across West Virginia, but the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Hollywood, and Las Vegas.
He said this effort and the support they are getting from it is overwhelming.
“We just can’t be more grateful for all of the people that are supporting us, we have a lot of people that jumped on board last minute from all over, even T. Graham Brown is going to be doing a song for us from the Grand Ole Opry, and it’s just really cool, we’re very fortunate,” Sizemore said.
Allen said a similar effort was held following the devastating floods back in 2016 that hit parts of the Mountain State. He said that telethon was very successful and they hope this one can capitalize on it.
“We did that in 2016 and our buddy Landau Eugene Murphy was instrumental in that as well, and in two hours time, we put it together in four days, and within two hours we raised $340 thousand dollars to go to folks there in eastern Kanawha County and Greenbrier County,” Allen said.
All proceeds from the telethon will be collected and distributed by local Salvation Army chapters who are working in the flood-damaged areas.
You can make a donation during the three-hour telethon Saturday by going to this link.