As bad as the pictures look, they don’t even come close to conveying the enormous amount of damage done to Harry Arrington’s home in Missouri City after a severe winter storm caused the pipes inside to freeze and burst, sending thousands of gallons of water cascading throughout his house.
“The water was everywhere, there was no stopping it,” Harry said.
Harry is a Vietnam veteran who lost his wife a short time ago, and then lost his ability to do many of the things he loves, after he was stricken with Parkinson’s disease.
And if that wasn’t enough, when his home was nearly destroyed by all that water, his insurance company refused to cover the damage.
Yes, they denied his claim.
That’s when close friends of Harry’s, not Harry himself, called me and the Spencer Solves It team for help.
I began assembling a huge team of people to repair Harry’s ravaged home.
We started with Vernon Fields, a big-hearted building contractor who agreed to help and began making repairs, assembling a long list of all the building materials we would need.
We would need more than $10,000 in materials to do the job.
Next, we reached out to the amazing people at Home Depot and Team Depot, the charitable arm of Home Depot, who put together a team of 40 volunteer workers willing to help us.
They also agreed to donate all of the materials we would need, which came to more than $13,000 worth of drywall, paint, flooring, fixtures and more.
On a hot day in May, we all joined together to basically rebuild Harry’s home, replacing all of the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the toiletries, fixtures, ceiling fans and everything else, and by golly we got the job done!
We even painted the entire house, inside and out, and did the landscaping, lawn, flowers and trees.
When we brought Harry to see the work we had done, he could barely speak. He was so moved.
After walking the house with Harry and showing him all the work we did, all Harry could say was “thank you.”
Vernon Fields, who did much more work than anyone else, spent weeks working on Harry’s house. He told us what Harry told him.
”When me and Harry walked into the house, the first thing he said was ‘I love you.’ He said ‘God is good.’ He said to tell everyone involved in the project from you to Home Depot, to all the volunteers, ‘thank you, from the bottom of my heart,’” Vernon said.
Yes, Harry is grateful, but we, all of us, at The Spencer Solves It Team, at Home Depot, are just as grateful to him, for risking his life for our country and for giving us the chance to get to know his beautiful, sweet soul, if only for a little while.
Bless you Harry and thank you for your service to this country.