Everett & Elaine

Our only neighbors on the street, Everett and Elaine, moved back into their home last week. We brought them home-baked "welcome back to the neighborhood" cookies the other night. The elderly couple was so thrilled to be back in their new home and be able to share that experience with us. Within less than a minute of being inside their home Elaine was showing us through every corner of the house. She showed us their new closet, telling us that all of the clothes inside were from a distribution center and how grateful she was for those free articles.

Everett, a man in his late sixties, had cleared their lot and the interior of their house by January entirely by himself. When it was finally time to rebuild his wife urged him to go to a local church to seek help from volunteers. That's where he met a man named Ken. As Everett puts it "once I told him about all the work I'd already done, he knew we were one of the families he wanted to help." Ken worked with Everett every day until the couple's recent move-in. Elaine mentioned that he installed their kitchen counter, cabinets and appliances. He helped Everett with everything from the plumbing to the molding on the walls. Without his help and the labor he donated, the couple said their house would have been finished but entirely bare - there would not have been money for furniture or anything else.

Everett is a remarkable man. Aside from all of the impressive work he accomplished on his own in preparation for rebuilding, Everett is an impressive man in terms of his reflective nature. Everett was near tears when telling us about how much it meant to him that Ken was so devoted to helping his family. Ken went to their house every day and stayed with the couple until their home was complete. Everett told us that before Katrina, he sadly doesn't know if he would have gone to another part of the country to donate his time and effort had a disaster hit elsewhere. He said he just didn't really understand a situation like that or the immense fortune it was to have volunteer help before he lived through it. Now he says that if a disaster hits somewhere else in the country he will go and serve that community as much as he is able, as so many, including Ken, did for him and Lorraine. Everett is now donating his time to another rebuilding project, working with Ken. Now that his home is completed he will work toward the heart-warming moment of moving back in for another family.