Have Tools, Will Travel
Bill Morse (left) and Terry Weber set up a jig to cut siding for the house they are building.
News: Meet the Care-A-Vanners -- Habitat for Humanity's golden-aged, RV-riding construction corps.
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Oris Weber was sitting in a converted chicken coop in Englishtown, New Jersey, when she first heard from God. The old coop is where the 20 families who make up the Gateway Community Church meet to pray. It is a plain building -- long, low, made of cement blocks -- and just as austere inside. Its members sit in metal folding chairs, facing a simple wooden cross, which is what Doris was doing when God said to her, Habitat for Humanity.
It was the first time she'd ever been addressed directly by the Lord. She is a plainspoken woman, with a level gaze and the unpoetical air of someone who doesn't have room in her life for making things up. She didn't know how to account for what had just occurred, so she kept silent, telling neither her pastor nor her husband, Terry. Then it happened again, the following Sunday: Habitat for Humanity. She sat Terry down and told him, and he agreed this demanded attention. "Because the two of us are one after our marriage vow," he says. "If He speaks to her, He speaks to me."
The two had retired not long before, and they decided to head down to Americus, Georgia, where Habitat -- the well-known nonprofit that builds houses for the poor -- is based. But when Doris called to ask how they might help, she was brought up short. Lots of good-hearted Northerners like to volunteer at Habitat during the winter -- so many that the woman she spoke with, Marge Kitterman, advised the Webers not to come unless they felt like sitting around and waiting for some odd job to open up. There was another possibility, however. Most of Habitat's houses are built by affiliates sprinkled throughout the country, but a lesser-known arm, the RV Care-A-Vanners, travel in their RVs to whichever affiliates need help putting up a house. The only requirement, Marge told her, is that you are able to camp out in a tent or RV.
As luck would have it, right after the Webers retired they'd bought an RV with some money willed them by an aunt. They'd traveled to Alaska and back, and loved being on the road. So in the spring of 1998, they drove down to Americus, not to help out in the office, but to join 1,400 people who were putting up 25 houses in a single week. It was the first time Doris or Terry had done construction beyond the basics familiar to any homeowner, and certainly the first time they'd ever been part of so mammoth and lively a project. They were hooked. In the popular imagination, retirees are absorbed in equal parts rest, amusement, and disengagement. Yet Terry and Doris Weber, both in their 70s, form part of a little-noticed tide of older Americans who have decided not to accept the definition of retirement as a break from the cares of the world. At an age when many people would be puttering around the golf course or resigning themselves to days alone in front of the television set, they've chosen to leave behind a tangible legacy of good works.
Photo: Alex Harris
