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Local Family Finds New Home in Habitat House
by Kristalyn Bunyan
Two-year-old Christian Roberts settles in to the home he will remember
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Richard Lowrance, a senior at Mars Hill College and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, told of happy times putting up insulation, while new Habitat homeowners Ricky and Lorie Roberts told of putting in sheetrock.
They recalled those moments as they gathered with volunteers, community members, and members of the Madison County Habitat for Humanity on February 22 to dedicate the newly finished house and turn it over to the Roberts family.
"Just seeing the success that can happen when you bring people together like the Roberts and the local community" is a real pleasure, Lowrance told the group.
The new house, located on a hill near Brush Creek, is the fifteenth house completed in Madison County by the local Habitat chapter.
Habitat for Humanity works in partnership with the community and the prospective homeowner to build an affordable house. A family must apply and qualify to obtain a house. Each family must contribute four hundred hours of work towards their house and pay an interest-free mortgage. Donors' money and volunteers' labor help bring down the cost of construction.
Time "is perhaps the most generous of all gifts," said Jim Utterback, president of the local Habitat chapter, adding, "it is the memories of time that are the most vivid to me."
Board member Greg Yost said more than 100 volunteers worked on the house, coming from four local churches and from churches and groups in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Student volunteers and summer groups came from Davidson College and Mars Hill College.
Utterback presents a Bible
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During the dedication, Utterback presented Ricky and Lorie Roberts with a Bible, and Yost presented them with a house key.
"This is a great program," said Ricky Roberts, describing how the family "had lived in a two bedroom mobile home in terrible need of repair."
Lorie Roberts said the family had been given an application and filled it out but didn't really expect to get a home, knowing there were other families who needed housing more than they did. They were thankful to be accepted.
During their four hundred hours of work, Ricky put up sheetrock and worked with concrete and masonry, Lorie said. He had once worked for a gutter company but had little prior construction experience. She and the children painted. The children did odds and ends such as sweeping and picking up trash.
Lorie and Ricky currently work at a local nursing home. Both are from Madison County and have known each other since childhood. They have been married for ten years. They will live in their new house with children Mark, Josh, Chastity, and Christian, plus Milo the family dog and Bobby the cat.
Lorie said the children are happy to be moving into a bigger house because they have never had a room to themselves, except for Chastity, who has because she is a girl. Still, Chastity, 10, says that her favorite aspect of the house is her room, especially the middle, where she sometimes likes to sit, and also the front porch.
The house has been finished since Christmas - except for connections to heat and hot water. Lorie recalled approaching the house with Ricky on a crisp cold Christmas Eve just to see it.
"Everything was all fixed," she recalled. "The carpet was in. I had a dress on and some sandals. I wanted to be the first one to run barefooted in the house. So I threw my shoes off and went...running around the house. Ricky thought I was crazy. 'What are you doing? You're crazy! It's 90 below and you're running around barefooted!' I said I wanted to be the first one to walk barefooted on the new carpet."
The Madison County chapter is part of Habitat for Humanity International, which was founded in 1976. Today, Habitat has built more than 150,000 houses around the world, providing more than 750,000 people in more than 3,000 communities with affordable shelter.
Note: Hilltop Reporter Kristalyn Bunyan has worked as a Habitat volunteer.
To contribute to the local organization, contact Jim Utterback at 689-1279. For more information on the international organization, see http://www.habitat.org
Story was posted on 2/23/04.
One quotation was updated on review of tapes on 2/24/04.
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