By Mo Scarpelli
When several men from Woodruff Road Community Church in Greenville, North Carolina arrived at a house in Gary, West Virginia last week to repair a water-damaged room, they expected several days of hard work.
What they didn’t expect were two smiling little girls to keep them company throughout the project.
“We were looking for somewhere to put our nails and Kaleigh brought us a little princess box,” said Todd Gleason, Experience Mission Construction Manager. “She kept coming back in the room and saying, ‘It’s so beautiful, it’s so beautiful,’ even though it was still under construction.”
Kaleigh, 4, and Brooke, 2, live with grandparents Beth and Ronnie several miles from historic downtown Welch, West Virginia.
The family applied to the local nonprofit organization, School for Life, Inc., two years ago for home repair. School for Life, Inc. partners with Experience Mission in home repair projects for those in need.
The small EM team spent last week laying drywall and spackling the cracks of the Finley’s back room, where their granddaughters will have their own rooms, for the very first time.
Beth and Ronnie Finley’s house troubles began in July of 2001, when a great flood struck southern West Virginia, leaving more than 1,500 families without homes.
The Finleys were nearly one of them. Their backyard washed away into the creek behind their house and part of their roof tore off in the relentless wind.
“It pulled apart from the beams and water started getting up under the roof, not just falling on it,” said 45-year-old Beth Finley. “That’s when the ceiling fell down.”
In the seven years since the flood, the Finley’s roof has never completely recovered, despite their best efforts to repair it.
“We bought plywood and rolled roofing (tar paper) and tried to fix it,” said Beth, who has been married to Ronnie Finley for eight years. “It got us through the winter, but started leaking in the spring again.”
After getting off work at the body shop, Ronnie Finley would hoist himself up on top of the house to patch the roof with scrap tin that he’d gotten from a friend. Beth calls it “our flannel shirt roof” because there are so many different colors.
Beth says she didn’t really mind the leaking too much until she adopted her granddaughter, Kaleigh. Ronnie put up a partition to block out the corner of the room where water damage was the worst, and Kaleigh occasionally slept in the front part of the room, though she was more comfortable in her grandparents’ bed.
With Experience Mission’s help, the rooms are now leak-safe, which Beth says is perfect timing for the Finley’s, considering they are in the process of obtaining full parental rights of their second grandchild, Brooke.
Brooke, now 2 years old, was born to a drug-addicted mother and soon after, her father, Beth’s son, was arrested for breaking and entering and sent to jail. Beth and Ronnie Finley have been fighting for custody of their grandchild for more than a year, as she bounced from foster care to her mother’s care to her other grandmother’s care in the meantime.
Beth says with paperwork and court dates out of the way, the family is finally achieving stability. Now that the children have permanent homes, Beth says EM house repair help will have a big impact on the girls’ quality of life.
“The girls are going to have their own rooms for the first time ever,” said Beth Finley. “We’ve been daydreaming – Kaleigh picked out sheets and wallpaper. She goes back there once in awhile to see where she wants to put her bed.”
To Gleason, home repair for the Finley’s wasn’t just about fixing a room. It was also about setting an example to the girls of how faith can lead to compassion and hard work.
“Beth couldn’t express enough how much it meant to her that there were young people interested in doing this work,” said Gleason. “All the young people around here that she knows are into messed up stuff.”
Beth says she often sees crack cocaine and methamphetamine use go undetected by police in her area.
McDowell County has the highest drug-related mortality rate in the state, according to a 2006 report by the West Virginia Prevention Resource Center. More than 30 percent of deaths involve drugs or other abused substances.
Beth worries about this, mostly because she saw her own son fall into a desperate drug addiction. She says five of her neighbors are also grandparents taking care of the children their kids’ couldn’t, due to drug problems.
“It’s real bad here. If they had more people like you –“she said, pointing at EM volunteers as they scraped joint compound on the ceilings, “then they wouldn’t want to get into drugs in the first place.”
The team of five – Earl Nadeau, David Gray, Steve Kinney, Sam Farley, and Gleason – finished in three days, though the rooms still need painting.
Kaleigh Finley says that part is her job.
“I’m going to paint my new room with my daddy and we’re going to make purple butterflies!” said Kaleigh, as she looked around the back corner room she claimed as her own.
EM continues to partner with School for Life, Inc. until the end of July, bringing hundreds more volunteers to assess the needs of McDowell County residents.
Experience Mission is offering Summer 2010 mission trips to West Virginia and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn more.
