On June 8, 2016, the Home Depot Foundation announced that Thomas M. Brady American Legion Post 45 was awarded a $1,800 Team Depot grant for needed repairs to CWO (ret.) Joseph Tremblay’s USMC/US Army home in Canton, Ga.
Tremblay was initially referred to Jim Lindenmayer of Post 45 by a neighbor through the Cherokee County Senior Services in Canton. Once the referral came in to us, we attempted to contact the retired veteran to determine how we could help him. However, after explaining the Home Depot repair program to this veteran he was skeptical that something this good was real.
Tremblay, who served over 20 years total between the Marines and the Army, was diagnosed some years ago with cancer and as his health had deteriorated over the years, has not been able to perform the normal home upkeep that he had done years ago. Knowing that a veteran can use some assistance and getting him to accept assistance is a big issue for many veterans, and Joe was no exception.
It took multiple visits to Joe’s home and calls over about two months' time to get him to understand that there was a home repair program that could help to fix and maintain his home through veteran and community volunteers at little or no cost to him, recalled Lindenmayer, service officer of Post 45 and director of the Cherokee County Homeless Veteran Program which manages the Veteran Home Repair program.
Once we were able to get Joe to understand that this was not charity and that the program was real, we set out to mobilize both the veteran and non-veteran community to help with this project. Joe’s health was an issue and so was his financial situation, so we recommended to Fred Brown, Home Depot Team Depot Captain, and Mike Struck, store manager of the Home Depot located in Canton, that Joe’s project was worthy of a Team Depot Grant. Working with Home Depot Pro-Desk manager Jason Finck, we immediately took to filling out the grant paperwork, and after waiting several weeks we were lucky enough to be awarded this grant from the Home Depot Foundation.
In addition to the Home Depot Foundation grant, Lindenmayer approached other members of the Cherokee County Consortium for additional assistance on this project. The consortium, which the Veteran Home Repair program is part of, also includes Habitat for Humanity North Central Georgia headed by Sabrina Kirkland, the Cherokee County Volunteer Aging Council headed by Judy Davila, and the Cherokee County Community Block Development Grant (CBDG) team headed by Laura Calfee. This consortium was formed in 2015 and focuses on leveraging home repair resources for veterans or seniors who are financially challenged or disabled. Each member of the consortium brings special abilities or funding to the table, which allows us to bring the maximum resources to bear on any project that meets established criteria.
In the case of Tremblay, the Home Depot Team along with the Veteran Home Repair program and the VAC focused our resources and efforts on the exterior projects that had been identified. In this case the projects consisted of yard cleanup, designing and building a new wheelchair ramp, porch steps and railings, repairing the wooden privacy fence and repairing then re-installing the damaged flagpole. The Habitat for Humanity project team would focus their efforts on the interior of the house, where they could bring to bear their expertise and funds for HVAC, electrical and internal construction efforts.
On the project start date, the Team Depot team brought with them several members of the Taylor Construction team, along with a donated Bobcat and Backhoe to help with the external cleanup and grading that was needed to complete the project. Teams were quickly created for the 30+ volunteers that showed up daily to attack the workload over the two days of the exterior project. The teams worked seamlessly from the start of the project day at 0900 hrs. and ended up right to about 1700 hrs. both days, with a break for on-site lunch. On Friday, the last day of the project, a special flag-raising ceremony was provided by the Woodstock Marine Corps League under the leadership of Commandant John Newport.
Groups that participated in the project included members of Home Depot from various local stores under the direction of Fred Brown, Team Depot captain, veterans from Marine Corps League Detachment 1311 Woodstock, American Legion Post 45 in Canton and 316 in Woodstock, VFW post 5262 in Canton, Soleil Veterans Club in Canton, as well as JROTC members from Cherokee High School. In all a total of over 1,250 hours of volunteer manpower was provided for this project across all attendees.
Editor Note - From the start of this project we knew that Tremblay’s cancer was getting more aggressive. Less than a month from this writing and five months after we finished this project, we were all saddened to learn of the passing of Joe. Until the end of the project, Joe still used to tell me that he could not believe that people who he did not know nor were related to him would volunteer their time to come and do projects to his home that he could no longer perform.