The ground in Greenville, South Carolina, was saturated from days of rain and strong winds that uprooted trees and utility poles throughout the region.

One of those trees, a Red Oak standing about 70 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter, crashed into the second-story apartment of Charles Dean, 59, who was killed on Sept. 27 while waiting out the storms from Hurricane Helene.

Rather than the tree ending up in a landfill or turned into mulch, his family plans to honor Dean's memory with the logs from the tree. His relatives, according to a local news report, plan to use some of its wood to "craft a beautiful bench, table, or other pieces of furniture and donate them to one of the drug recovery centers where Charles touched many lives," Deans' brother, Matthew, told the Associated Press.

News reports said that Dean texted his family telling them that he could hear trees falling as the storm approached. “In the middle of it now, scary,” he texted his brother Matthew and his sister-in-law, who were checking on him from 300 miles away in North Carolina. “It’s like mom and dad’s old neighborhood trees, all old-growth trees, and they’re going down, frightening,” he added.

According to WDRW, the family has run a lumber business since the early 1900s.

Dean was one of more than 230 people estimated to have been killed by Hurricane Helene and its aftermath.