On Saturday June 21, we kicked off the summer right by having the wonderful opportunity to work with members from J.L. Patterson. Since most of our volunteers are engineers, we were sure they could handle painting Leanne and Dan’s home! No task was too big for this group; they were more than qualified at being painters for the day. We started out the morning with Dave, Habitat for Humanity, Riverside’s Project Coordinator, giving the morning safety talk and prayer. After the talk, Dave split up the volunteers to divide and conquer by painting different sections of the house simultaneously.

The park requested that Leanne and Dan have their house painted, as not all sides of the home were the same color. Although the park had provided Leanne and Dan with paint, it turned out not to be enough for the entire home, resulting in the front and back sections of the home being different colors. Leanne’s attempt to paint her home was not as easy feat as she painted it single handedly. Dan used to be a mechanic but became disabled, limiting his ability to help Leanne paint their home. Additionally, Leanne also struggles with her health, needing surgery on both her back and heart. And as if her health afflictions were not enough, she is a fulltime care taker to her father, who suffers from dementia.

Leanne was such a joy to work with. She was very hands on and was outside conversing with members from J.L. Patterson majority of the time. She even made grill cheese sandwiches for the volunteers.

The J.L. Patterson volunteers that worked on Leanne and Dan’s house were definitely some hard working volunteers. All the volunteers were so pumped to beautify the house they even brought some of their own tools trying to fix up little kinks, like the remount of the awning. We had about 17 volunteers working on the house so the painting got done fairly quickly, which was ideal to avoid painting in this summer heat. This was J.L. Patterson’s first time partnering with Habitat for Humanity, Riverside and Brandon, a J.L. Patterson volunteer, made sure this day was documented and remembered by taking his own photographs of the group throughout the day.

What a great volunteer day we had with J.L. Patterson. Compared to railroad-engineering consulting, I’m sure painting was a piece of cake!

Thank you, J.L. Patterson, for helping us give Leanne and Dan’s home some TLC!