There I was one day about 25 years ago, admiring the 8-foot sheets of drywall I had so masterfully nailed to the wall in what would soon be someone’s house.
Actually, that was pretty easy. But being a Habitat for Humanity construction volunteer means you can take pride in completing a task — no matter how ordinary — while being prepared to be brought down to earth by the next challenge.
On that day, my mentor — Virgil Welch, a Bonita High industrial arts teacher and our construction foreman at rehabilitating a multihome project in Chino — had me spread drywall mud in the joints between the sheets, leaving it so smooth that the seams were hidden.
“Try it. It’s not hard,” said Virgil (nobody called him Mr. Welch).
I spent the next 20 minutes proving him wrong. I managed to slop drywall mud all over the wall, the floor and my arms, covering pretty much everything but the seams. Obviously, having a master’s degree doesn’t prepare you for this kind of work.
“Here’s what you do,” said the patient Virgil, after observing the mess and my depressed state of mind.
Moving with the grace of a master baker icing a layer cake, he grabbed a trowel and with a wave of his hand adroitly slapped a clump of mud on the seams. Another quick twist or two of the trowel smoothed the mud, and in seconds the seam had disappeared.
“See, it’s not hard,” he laughed, knowing how I felt because he’d seen it before with so many of his inexperienced volunteers.
Few Habitat for Humanity volunteers have construction backgrounds at the start, but they get a chance to learn new tasks, using Virgil’s trial-and-error method. And heck, after a few tries, I actually was able to properly apply drywall mud, though I usually still made a bit of a mess.
Habitat for Humanity is an international movement of volunteers who build and repair homes with hardworking, low-income families and individuals — offering a hand up, not a hand out, to build a long-term investment for their future. Affiliates in Southern California have built and rehabilitated many thousands of houses for such families for more than 30 years.
Working on Habitat for Humanity projects — building new houses or rehabbing older ones — really just requires a willingness to learn new tasks and follow instructions. An incalculable sense of accomplishment keeps you coming back, knowing you are helping to build something for families very much in need.
Through the years, I learned skills like installing roof shingles, heating ducts, and siding as well as other tasks I never thought I’d ever attempt using some tools I’d never touched before.
Working among new and old volunteers, friendships quickly occur. I saw that in 2006-07 when I worked with the Pomona Valley affiliate’s most ambitious project: six houses built at First Street and Claremont Boulevard in Claremont.
One day, four women volunteers were asked to nail siding on one of the houses. Later, I heard a curious “tap-tap-tap-tap-tap” from one of them. She was lightly hitting the nail head, making almost no progress. She told me she was reluctant to hit hard because she was afraid of bending the nail.
I explained that the nail cost only a bare fraction of a penny and feels no pain, plus everyone bends a nail while hammering. I encouraged her to show that nail head no mercy, and she got right into it. The “tap-tap-tap-tap-tap” disappeared, and she was surprised by how few nails were bent in the process.
She and the other women, strangers on that first day, became close friends, worked the same days and followed up each session with lunch. I met one of them recently who said they still kept tabs on one another.
Some of the friends you meet might even be the actual family members whose house you are helping to build. They are required to do a couple of hundred hours of “sweat equity” work on their house together with the volunteers.
I remember how unnerving it was to hear one day from a prospective homeowner that he and his family were actually living in a garage. Something like that can really motivate you to work just that much faster to free them from a lifestyle no family should ever have to endure.
I have always marveled at the permanence of a Habitat project. That wall I built — or actually that Virgil and I did that day — is still there. Perhaps it’s part of the first bedroom a young person ever had of their own, allowing them to grow to adulthood without the stress of sharing a cramped apartment in a dangerous part of town. That room and its house will probably still be in use with future families when that child is a grandparent.
And don’t forget there’s the “pay” you receive for your toils. Once the house is completed, a ceremony is held and the keys are turned over to the family, amid teary eyes on just about everyone. That overwhelming amount of satisfaction you receive by having a part in building that house is something you carry the rest of your life. And it also makes you raring to go to start the next house for another family.
The various Habitat chapters do what today seems impossible: they build new houses or rehabilitate old ones here that a qualified low-income family could never otherwise afford in this crazy real estate environment. Each affiliate is constantly raising tens of thousands of dollars, seeking land and soliciting donations of materials for each project. Volunteers are a valuable workforce but they gotta have nails, drywall and paint, which continue to skyrocket in price.
I can’t speak for other Habitat volunteers, but I suspect there are many like me, who go out of their way occasionally to take a look at a long-completed house they worked on.
For me, I check out a porch railing I helped build on the house on Nocta Street in Ontario, or remember those two adjacent Fern Street houses in Ontario where my wife Nancy and daughter Susan worked on the “women’s build” house while I was next door building with the male crew, or even two houses we started building during the Los Angeles County Fair before being moved to Hamilton Street in Pomona.
I encourage anyone to consider joining Habitat efforts to bring together people to build homes, communities and hope. If you can’t pick up a hammer, consider picking up a pen and writing a check; there are no too-small donations of time or money. Every action, no matter what size, does make a difference.
The late President Jimmy Carter, who in retirement was Habitat’s most visible volunteer, said of his motivations: “My faith demands that I do whatever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have, to try to make a difference.”