By Collin Quigley, AmeriCorps Member & Volunteer Coordinator
I may be one of few people who enjoys driving up Route 422 early in the morning. Once you get past the Royersford exit – provided there is not too much fog – you are able to see the edge of the Appalachia mountains from a distance. Something I’ve heard Homeboy Industries founder Greg Boyle say is that to create meaningful change you have to “get close to the poor.” From the highway, it is difficult to see the struggles and hope of communities tucked in-between the hills. During our Women Build Week, along with our volunteers, I had the opportunity to sweat with two amazing women: Debra and Pam. Both Deb and Pam’s stories are of overcoming challenges and offer radical hope to our volunteers and their communities.
On Tuesday of Women Build Week, we got to sweat alongside Deb at her future home on Chestnut Street in Pottstown. That Tuesday marked almost a year since the last time Habitat MontDelco had a team build day, during the 2020 Women Build. Alongside ten wonderful women from our community, a team from DOW Chemical, and State Senator Maria Collett, we began to build the insulation for Deb’s home. This was Deb’s first day on site, as she begins her sweat equity journey, where she will dedicate many hours to building her family’s home.
Deb’s journey to being a homeowner is a long-time coming. As a Pottstown resident, Debra prayed that this Habitat home would be the one she would own. Deb’s motivation to become a homeowner is rooted in her giving nature. For Deb, owning a home is not about her, but about her three granddaughters that she has adopted as her own. Deb’s dream is to make 417 Chestnut Street “a solid place for my kids to call home.” Thanks to her sweat and that of our volunteers and construction leads, we are on our way.
Our second half of the week was spent on the lawn of our new friend Pam in Drexel Hill. With our friends at Aqua America and Heroic Gardens, we began to build seeds of hope for Pam’s future garden. Twice a year Habitat partners with our friends at Heroic Gardens to work to beautify the lawns of deserving veteran families in Montgomery and Delaware Counties. It would be tough to think of a more deserving veteran than Pam; Pam’s distinguished career of service to our country includes years of service in both the Army and the Air Force. Pam used her skills as an engineer to work in our nuclear program and supported operations in Sierra Leone and the Middle East, including serving during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield.
After moving back to the Philadelphia area after a distinguished military career, Pam did not stop serving her community. Pam became a personal aid to work one-on-one with at-risk students at Upper Darby High School. That work encouraged Pam to serve in another way: as a foster, and then adopted parent. Pam fostered (and then adopted) seven children; as Pam told me, “they did not always have the best start to their childhood, so I did everything I could to make sure they had an amazing finish.” Through her work, Pam now has twenty-three grandchildren, the twenty-third appropriately named “Jordan.”
Throughout Women Build Week, I was reminded of many of the amazing women I have sweated with, as homeowners, co-leads, colleagues, participants, and community members on Habitat build sites from Pottstown, to Willow Grove, Exmore, Morgantown, and beyond. The common thread of their service I think is best tied together by something Pam told me when we were chatting in her garage on our last day in Drexel Hill. When speaking about her experience as a foster parent, she shared that “people would tell me, you already served. They were right that I served my country, now it is my responsibility to serve my community.”
People like Deb and Pam view their life’s work as not an effort to fix or help, but rather to truly serve people who they care about. Rachel Naomi Remen once wrote that “from the perspective of service, we are all connected: all suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy.” In serving alongside with Pam, the joy that radiates from her service shines on all of us. After all, “when we serve our work itself will renew us…in serving, we find gratitude.”
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