Methodists to honor Liscum for flood volunteerism

A Cedar Rapids man who put his career on hold for 11 months to help his city clean up after a devastating flood will be honored by the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church on Sunday.

Curt Liscum, 55, a partner with Benchmark Roof and Pavement Consultants in Cedar Rapids, was given paid leave by his employer in October to work 20 hours a week as program manager for the United Methodist Church's flood recovery team.

By March, Liscum had decided to take a six-month leave of absence from Benchmark to work on flood recovery full time.

“I figured out early, probably by November, that two days a week wasn't going to be enough,” Liscum said. “We had way more work and way more volunteers (who) wanted to come and help.”

Still, it wasn't until the first of the year that Liscum started contemplating taking a leave of absence and working with flood-recovery volunteers full-time.

In his time as program manager, Liscum has helped rebuild 126 homes. He's coordinated 131,275 volunteer hours and worked with 7,859 volunteers from 43 states and five countries.

Liscum returns to Benchmark on Monday and a new program manager will take his place. While he's anxious to get back to work, Liscum said leaving the volunteer work won't be easy.

“Doing this is more than just a job. It's a passion,” he said. “It's something that, since October, I've been doing 12 to 15 hours a day. It's going to be hard, but it's time to go back to the job.

“The other part is, I really love what I do at Benchmark,” he said. “I always said if I didn't want to get up in the morning and go to work, maybe I should start looking for something else. I have the best situation - I have two jobs that I love to get up for.”

A celebration of ministry service honoring both Liscum and Benchmark is set for 7 p.m. Sunday in the Fellowship Hall of First United Methodist Church in Marion.