Every summer three engineers from the Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, travel to Kentucky, roll up their sleeves and spend a week donating their time and sweat to help a family in need.
Civil Engineer Tommy Hunt, Chief of the Electronic Security Branch Steve Willoughby and Civil Engineer Mike Gooding work together every June to build a home for an underprivileged family through Mountain Outreach.
Mountain Outreach is a program operated by the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. It provides numerous services for underprivileged community members, including a home building program for deserving families.
“It’s a pretty poor area so (Mountain Outreach is) helping one family at a time,” Gooding said.
The men start on a Monday and work alongside other volunteers all day until they finish the house on a Thursday or Friday.
“It’s not an easy week,” Gooding said. “This year it was hot, extremely hot. So it’s a tough week to build. It’s a lot of work (but) a lot of fun.”
Camaraderie and the new friendships that form during the week make the labor easier, Willoughby said.
At the end of the week, the house is a “dried and lockable structure,” but the interior is not yet completed, Hunt said.
In about a month the house is totally finished, he said.
“So a family goes from a trailer with the floor falling in or maybe living with some other family member, a month later, five weeks later, to (having) keys to their own house,” he said.
The hard labor is definitely worth the feeling of gratitude and accomplishment afterward, Willoughby said.
“You do a lot, but you feel like you get more out of it,” Willoughby said. “You don’t feel like you’ve expended anything.”
Hunt, Willoughby and Gooding volunteer through Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, where Hunt is a member. Hunt recruited the other two men for the summer program.
After around 30 years of involvement, the church continues to participate in the Mountain Outreach program, Hunt said.
Building for the Mountain Outreach program is infectious, Willoughby said.
“You know, we’re very blessed,” he said. “I get 26 days off a year as a government employee. It’s nothing for me to give a week of my time. So I said (to Hunt) ‘okay I’ll go with you,’ and then I was hooked after that.”
The experience puts life in perspective, Willoughby said.
“(If) you go up there, you come back realizing how blessed you are,” he said.