Today May 24 th, 2007, the folks of Rock Island, Illinois,and surrounding communities pulled together in a huge way, and built a house for Travis Hern. For those of you who don't know, Travis Hern is a football player who was critically injured while playing his game in September of 2006.It seemed a normal play, but suddenly the unforeseen occurred,and Travis and an opposing player from the Alleman High School team came head to head on the field, along with a lot of other boys on the Rocky High and Alleman Teams.But out of that tangle of arms and legs and bodies, all of the other boys got up, but Travis just laid there. Quickly the game was halted,as emergency people and equipment converged on the field and Travis was rushed to the hospital,and the game was called off.Parents, coaches, and both teams knelt on the field to pray for him and everyone felt awful when they found out that Travis's neck and spinal column were severed. All the students of all the local high schools rallied around the cause as word spread that Travis was paralyzed,and his family didn't have the money to pay for his medical bills, nor to fund the sort of housing the family and Travis would need to survive. Every school was involved in raising money,spearheaded by the students themselves.They sold ball caps, had runs, and began planning right away for a wheelchair accessible house for the family.
In an amazing show of support for one of our own, The Quad Cities put everything in place without the major funding one normally associates with such an undertaking, and today, as dawn broke, the foundation was already in place, the property bought,and beginning at five a.m. Everyone from contractors to football teams showed up on their own to take part in the actual building of Travis's house, TODAY!
As we watched over KWQC TV 6, the walls went up, the roof was put on, the ramps were built, the wiring and plumbing went in, the walls were finished,and the flooring was installed, and all under the watchful eye of the several inspectors who needed to okay everything who had to sign off on any house for immediate inhabitance.
By the time night fell, special lighting had been put in place to flood the area to daytime brilliance so that the work could continue until everything was completely done,and by morning, as I understand it, the house will be move-in ready. They even said the sod will be laid by the football players from every school from 70 miles around. And all of it. Every last bit, was all done by volunteers.
You'd expect such a feat to have been paid for in part by some huge corporation or rich philanthropist such as Oprah Winfrey,but the only high profile names connected with this was Michelle Wei, who sent a sizable check when she heard about it a while back, and Mike Ditka. Well, God bless them both, but most of the money for this event, came from the dollars raised by the efforts of the local school kids, in their compassion for a fallen chum, ignoring completely school rivalries and crossing community lines.
Sometimes the best of humanity comes out of the worst that can befall us.
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technorati tags: Habitat for humanity, Travis Hern.
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