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women paid their own transportation and lodging expenses and each made a monetary donation toward the project. The building
team is part of Woman's Missionary Union, the largest Protestant missions organization worldwide with one million members; WMU
is an auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention. The team who helped build the Alton Habitat home is WMU's Illinois
delegation.
Nancy Whitlow, team leader on the project, says this is not the first home in Southwestern Illinois that these ladies have
built.
"We've also built Habitat homes in Wood River, Marion and Jacksonville," she said. "We were the first chapter (of WMU) to
build in Ghana, West Africa (in 2002)."
This is Whitlow's seventh Habitat home project. Volunteers in Ghana had to make bricks from mud.
Thanks to the largest donation coming from the trust of a life-long member of Alton's Main Street United Methodist Church,
Eleanor Brady, Habitat's Piasa Chapter was able to kickstart the effort in mid September.
One of the volunteers, a woman from Birmingham, Ala., had been homeless herself for 15 years. Now that she has a roof over
her own head, she says, she wants to give to others.
"I've never built a home before, but I had broken into many," she said. "This is my way of giving back."
Alton native Amber Waggoner and her children will live in the local Habitat home, expected to reach completion by year's
end.
Where do these volunteers gain the skills to haul 4x8-foot sheets of plywood and trusses up a muddy slope to the home site,
frame it, apply sheeting, tar paper and shingles, wield power saws and more? Whitlow says it takes a top-notch foreman, muscle
and a willingness to learn quickly on the job. And it takes stamina to work 10-hour days in temperatures that exceeded 90
degrees.
"The foreman determines what is needed," she said. "From the first time you do it, you just do as you're told, and then you
learn for the next time. We handle all the equipment - saws, staple guns, automatic hammer guns. Most of the women had no
skills at all when they started building for Habitat. You learn by experience…by getting out there and getting it done."
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Collinsville resident and retired Illinois Bell executive Harry Windland was the foreman on what is known as the "Eleanor
Brady Build" in Alton.
"My father was a carpenter, so I know a lot of construction skills," he said. "Being the 'lead guy' on the site and seeing
these women work as hard and as well as they do is really something. Construction sites are often laced with four-letter words
and maybe a beer at quitting time, but not on these Habitat sites. It's really a positive environment. And the personal
stories these women share about their own lives, about overcoming adversities, are really touching."
Waggoner, the soon-to-be homeowner, fulfilled more than the Habitat-required "sweat equity" number of hours; she took a
week's worth of vacation from her job to work steadily on her own home, Windland said.
"She didn't have any construction experience," he added. "But she got over her fear of climbing ladders and learned how to
drive nails. It was a pretty gratifying thing to see her children come over to the site and pick out where their bedrooms will
be."
Martha Cogan, board member of Habitat's Alton/Godfrey chapter, says approximately 4,000 hours worth of volunteer labor will
be spent completing Waggoner's house; Habitat houses, she says, stand the test of time and tribulation.
"One of the things Habitat was so proud of was that the Habitat houses (built in Homestead, Fla.) withstood Hurricane
Andrew (in 1992) when other houses fell," said Cogan.
In response to the hurricanes that have leveled communities and destroyed lives on the Gulf Coast, Habitat for Humanity has
launched an emergency appeal for funds and volunteers to help families in the affected areas recover and rebuild.
More than 455,000 housing units in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama will need to be replaced or totally rebuilt as a
result of Hurricane Katrina. Nearly 156,000 of those units were home to families with household incomes of less than $20,000 a
year. Nearly 99,000 more were home to families with annual incomes of less than $35,000. For more information on how you can
help, see www.habitat.org/disaster/2005/katrina.
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