2 families anxious for new Habitat homes

Lucy Lemons will get to live in a brand new home for the first time.

Lemons, grandmother of Roger Jones, couldn’t contain the joy she felt sitting inside her new home on Albemarle Avenue.

“I said I wished they had a Habitat when I was coming along,” she said.

Jones received the home through Habitat for Humanity, and spent countless hours putting sweat equity into the dwelling when not working his night-shift job at Hershey’s in Stuarts Draft.

“It’s great, I really need this big place for me and my kids, for my grandmother,” Jones said. “It’ll be real nice. ... I wanted them to have their own rooms so they can do their little things and their homework.”

Jones, who had been sleeping on a sofa in a one-bedroom Orange Street apartment in Staunton, said he is anxious to move in, which will happen late this month or in early December once the final touches are put on the home.

“I’ll be happier once I get in here,” Jones said. His two children, he said, are also excited to move in. He said the neighborhood has been supportive.

“A lot of people that live down here I already know, so that’s really good,” Jones said. “All the younger people I know, just the older people I have to get to know.”

Jones, his grandmother and two children, Lynwood and Celeste, will live on one side of the duplex, while Laura Kirkpatrick and her two children will be on the other.

Habitat held a house blessing ceremony Sunday for the two families at the duplex, where about 50 people – many of them Habitat volunteers – turned out.

Following her divorce, Laura Kirkpatrick was looking to improve her financial situation, and expressed appreciation to the Habitat volunteers who gave so much time. She said she’s ready to move in and get organized.

“It’s a wonderful project,” Kirkpatrick said. “The people are so dedicated – these volunteers.”

The Habitat home, and the support it offers, means she will be able to provide a better future for her children, Kirkpatrick said.

“Habitat not only helped us build a house,” Kirkpatrick said, “they gave us an education. ... They don’t just help you build a house. They make sure you’re ready for it and they’ll stand beside you long after the house is built.”

She said her son, Robin, was ready to move in once the roof went up on the house, and both he and Kirkpatrick’s daughter, Shelley, wanted to do more.

“If we could’ve gotten them in here with paint brushes and hammers, they would have done it,” Kirkpatrick said.

After the house blessing ceremony, construction manager Frank Wagner said that watching new families move into Habitat homes never gets old.

“Every new house is the same,” Wagner said. “You get the same warm, fuzzy feeling.”