Mellow Velo

Meanwhile, in Orange, Texas…

Posted on 07. Jul, 2010 by KFullerF4 in Life, Thoughts

(At the bottom of the page is a brief video I put together about the following organization.)

My job takes me to some interesting places, places like Americus, Ga., Minden, La., and Orange, Tex. In each, I’m awed by the true preservation of the human spirit. The people I meet really know how to dig deep, and they don’t just do it for three weeks at a time, they live daily at their limits, pushed around by the forces of mother nature or – sometimes – the unfortunate law of life that few things are fair.

I work for an organization called The Fuller Center for Housing, a small, national and international non-profit that builds and renovates homes for low-income people. We have a special group called Disaster ReBuilders that follows major storms helping with the reconstruction efforts in smaller towns often forgotten but still devastated. I didn’t ride last week because I visited this roving band of construction professionals in Orange, Tex., to see how they’re doing one year after arriving to gut and rebuild homes flooded by Hurricane Ike.

Eddie is the guy in charge. While I was there, he was hosting about 40 student volunteers – high school kids who had given up several days of summer to hang drywall, mud, paint and scrape for total strangers and in 90% humidity. A few were as young as 13, and when I asked why they were there, they looked at me with a sort of quizzical, annoyed-teenager look. I could hear them saying, “Duh!” in their heads, but they politely and maturely answered with shrugs and sans eye rolling, “To show people that they’re cared about, that they matter.” All this even though they can’t touch power tools at that age – the fun part, in my opinion.

What strikes me about the people helped by Disaster ReBuilders is how they persevere in hope despite losing everything to something beyond their control. They are middle-class homeowners who were doing fine, living in homes for 30 years as part of a community. When Ike washed ashore, they rolled up their sleeves, took their soggy belongings to the dump and began tearing into their homes, most lacking knowledge and with not enough money to pay for help. Many of those who could afford a professional lost thousands to contractors who asked for cash to buy materials, then ran off with it.

Eddie told me about a morning he walked into one house for the first time and saw the homeowner, a tiny, elderly woman, feebly nailing sheetrock to a wall while her daughters held it in place.

“Well, who else is going to do this?” she asked him fiercely.

One of my favorite homeowners is Jack, a guy in his 50s who worked so hard and so fast to get his family back into their home following Ike that he gave himself a heart attack. When Eddie and Disaster ReBuilders showed up to help, Jack’s wife cried in Eddie’s arms, believing her husband’s life was now saved. Jack wasn’t exactly listening to doctors. After triple-bypass surgery, he was back at work and probably would not have stopped until he killed himself.

I met Jack last February. He was only three months out of surgery and his house was torn to pieces, but he was smiling and deeply appreciative. Last week, when I knocked on his door, he opened it to reveal a beautifully restored, warm, simple home. He showed me around, proudly indicating which project had been done by which group of volunteers. The tour was less about the work than it was about the people. Claudia did the tile work, his brother-in-law built the cabinets, this church group did the painting, that neighbor helped put in the carpet.

The Tour may be about to start, but my everyday heroes are the volunteers who are running Disaster ReBuilders, helping them week in and week out and helping their neighbors rebuild communities. When I come home and look at my three-bike stable and all of my gear, I am more thankful than ever for what I have in both stuff and opportunities.