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Dan Wallrath's Christmas Message
Christmas
is a time for family and friends. It's also a time to reflect on how
fortunate and blessed we are and to give to those who are less
fortunate.
Last year, I wrote about Katie Piper's Christmas message. This year, I was touched by the kindness of a man called Dan Wallrath, one of the CNN heroes who builds free homes for wounded vets:
Alexander
Reyes' boyhood dream of a military career ended when he was hit by an
improvised explosive device during a patrol two years ago in Baghdad.
"Laying in that hospital bed ... sometimes I felt I'd rather [have] died," Reyes said. "My life came to a complete halt."
Reyes
sustained severe blast injuries that led to his medical discharge;
he's on 100 percent medical disability. Like many soldiers wounded in
Iraq and Afghanistan, Reyes, now 24, found the transition to civilian
life difficult.
But he and a handful of other injured veterans
are getting help from what may seem an unlikely source: a custom home
builder in Houston, Texas.Dan Wallrath recently presented Reyes and his wife with an unexpected gift: a home built especially for them, mortgage-free.
"Thank
you. That's all I can say," Elizabeth Reyes said, sobbing and
clutching her stunned husband's arm as Wallrath surprised them with the
house.
For Wallrath, giving wounded veterans a place to call
home is his way of saying thanks. Since 2005, his organization has
built four houses. Five more are under construction, and he's expanding
his idea into a national campaign called Operation Finally Home.
Wallrath
spent 30 years making upscale clients' dream houses a reality. But he
found a new mission in 2005 when he met with Steve Schulz about a very
different type of project.Schulz's 20-year old son, a U.S.
Marine, had been gravely injured in Iraq. Schulz desperately needed to
remodel his house to accommodate his son's wheelchair."I had no idea how I was going to pay for it," Schulz said. "I just knew that I had to get it done."
Wallrath went to advise Schulz on remodeling his house as a favor to a friend. It was a meeting that changed Wallrath's life.
He remembers Schulz showing him photos of his son Steven.
"He
was a big, strapping Marine," Wallrath said. But the pictures he saw
of Steven taken after his injury told a different story.
"He was ... half his size. It was so sad," he said. "It dawned on me that people are facing this all over the U.S."
Wallrath
mobilized an army of carpenters, plumbers and suppliers who took on
the remodeling job for free. They widened doorways, built a ramp to the
back door and made the bathroom handicapped-accessible.
"Anything that needed to be done, Dan said, 'We'll take care of it,' " Schulz recalled. "It was just a huge, huge relief."
When the work on Schulz's home was complete, Wallrath realized he was just getting started.
"It
really broke my heart to think [about] these young men and women," he
said. He decided the best way he could help wounded veterans was by
doing what he knew best: building them homes.
"It was like someone hit me upside the head with a 2x4. ... I just felt like this is what God wants me to do."
He
took his idea to his local trade group, the Bay Area Builders
Association, and convinced members to start a home-building program for
wounded veterans.
With donations from suppliers and
contractors, Wallrath said, the group can build a $300,000 house for
$25,000 to $50,000. Each house is fully furnished and customized to
meet the needs of each family and is mortgage-free. The group also
covers the taxes and insurance for two years.
Wounded veterans
or their spouses often have to find a new career or go back to school,
making it hard to make ends meet, Wallrath said.
"If you can
alleviate a financial burden off these young kids where they can
concentrate on rebuilding their lives, you can really make a
difference," he said.Lt. Erasmo Valles is one such story. As a
Marine, he was injured by an IED in Iraq in 2004 and ultimately had one
of his legs amputated. Returning to civilian life was hard, and his
family rapidly burned through its savings.
"We'd saved money for rainy days, but ... it was raining," Valles said.
Receiving
a home from Wallrath in November 2008 turned their fortunes around.
Valles, 34, is now studying for his doctorate in public safety; his wife
earned her master's degree and is now a special education teacher.
"It
saved us," he said. "We're moving on and moving forward. ... For
someone to think about me and my family ... to build a home -- wow.
That's a hero."
Wallrath is determined to help as many families
as he can. He's trying to enlist builders' associations across the
country to join his crusade, with the goal of building 100 homes. His
program got tremendous interest at an industry event in January, and it
soon hopes to break ground on a house near Chicago, the first outside
of Texas.
Considering the industry was hard-hit by the recession, Wallrath says he's been heartened by the response.
Now
retired, Wallrath dedicates about half of his time to this effort
without pay. He says it's the least he can do to repay some of the more
than 30,000 troops who've been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"These kids ... they're doing it for me and you," he said. "So we're the ones that need to step up and do something."
Here
is to Dan Wallrath and others who "step up and do something" for those
in need. You don't need to be Bill and Melinda Gates to give back to
your community. All it takes is a good heart, dedication to a cause you
believe in and lots of selfless perseverance. I wish you all a Merry
Christmas and Happy Holidays full of love, health and happiness.
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This is a wonderful story, Leo. Thanks so much. They pity is these poor young men and women gave so much for such a fraudulent cause.
Another Christmas Story
At the risk of deluding myself or someone---anyone---else that there is still goodness to be found in this world, I'll relate this tale of some kids from the back of beyond who demonstrate the true meaning of Christmas.... (Sorry for the hijack, Leo, but with all the doom and gloom in front of us on this site, I feel compelled to add another touch of something positive to what you've already written.)
*****
I'm a lucky boy. I know it. Not only because I have done just about everything "wrong" in my life (wrong schools, wrong careers), but because I had my own Tiny Tim or Grinch Moment when I learned the true meaning of Christmas.
I cashed out and left my "wrong" career on Wall Street some time ago and ended up in a kind of heaven within a hell. Long story short, I ended up taking on a sizeable number of street kids, orphans, and children whose parents were either incapable or unwilling to bring their own up the way a child should be raised.
Little did I know what spirit possessed these little imps.
Many years went by and the beggars became students, most becoming the first in their family ever to learn to read and write. They were hungry for knowledge, and worked their butts off, even taking extra cram classes to catch up on things their years on the street had failed to give them. Their days were filled with a hundred bad things---from abject poverty to physical or emotional abandonment to an uncaring and often brutal government---and at best a single good one. In my "previous" life, my own days had been filled with a hundred good things and perhaps a single bad one. I had had a tendency to focus on that one bad thing; these kids taught me to focus on the good one. For them, having just a singular positive, it was especially precious, so maybe it came easy to embrace it. Or just maybe they knew how to live, and I did not.
Over the years the oldest of my brood completed their primary studies and moved on to university (begun at age 16), a loosely defined term out here, but a mark of accomplishment nonetheless. One senior group of four girls, my personal pride and joy, were moved into an apartment of sorts where they lived together, cooked and cleaned together, and did their university time.
Like any parent, I had to teach them to budget. They were given money for monthly expenses. In the beginning the money would run out the first week of the month, so they would come asking for more. I got them to keep an account of what they spent to see where there was waste. Soon they could make it to mid month without coming back to the "bank". We would discuss their account together, and I would make suggestions on where improvements were possible. They began to shop more intelligently, buying non perishables in bulk and cutting out the ice cream and extra grooming items that are the seeming instinctual temptations of the young.
After a time they stopped coming to the "bank". They began to live within their budget every month.
And then they surprised me. One November evening, when we got together for a home cooked meal at my place, the four girls surrounded me and made a proposal. It seems that not only had they learned to live within the budget I had given them, they had spent the last few months living under budget and they had accumulated a surplus. They hadn't told me about the surplus. At our little after dinner meeting they asked a "favor" of me.
Would it be all right if instead of giving me back the money, they used it to buy bags of rice, cooking oil, and clothes which they would donate to some of the children and families in the city who had nothing? They also requested that I forego giving gifts to them, and throw whatever money I might have spent into the pot.
These were girls who had grown up in dirt floor bamboo huts, with neither power nor water, where malnourishment was the least of the maladies they faced (others being malaria, dengue, TB, hepatitis, septicemia, and HIV), where every single day of their early existence was spent in a search for calories, and where sharing might well have meant not surviving. Their world had been one of deprivation and exploitation, where visiting mamasans and, sadly, sometimes their own mothers, would try to transact business in human flesh. They had also escaped becoming "collateral damage" in the drug wars fought in their area by a host of private armies and government soldiers, all engaged in the illicit drug business.
Somewhere along the way these girls had made a character choice. They had taken stock of the lay of the land, but had decided they were going to dictate the rules by which they would live their lives. Somewhere along the way they had made a conscious choice to be good, something I had seen in them for years, but never more so than at this moment.
I have always been a cynic, and I remain one to this day. I have learned, however, that a cynic is really a hopeless romantic clad in a suit of armor.
My girls shot armor piercing bullets.
They taught me what goodness is, and what Christmas should mean.
Chindit well done and hats off.
The chain of being will change people's lives for mostly better. If we all did one small generous thing everyday and told the beneficiary to do the same the world would change dramatically.
The power of "us" cannot be stopped by any fascist dictatorship or oligarchy. We see it today with the elites running around scared shitless of the information released about their future intentions.
We all can stop them, it just takes a little bit of your time. Educate your families about the "realities" of our societies. They are controlled by evil families who should be hung in the town square not idolized.
Let me guess, they have a vaccine for that...
That's a good story about a good thing. It just takes a lot of people doing little things every day.
Since these zealots were injured for our 'american way of life' shouldn't our government be paying for their houses, instead of bailing out wall street????
Young men and women have been serving their countries since time immemorial. I did it too. It was a great way to go to college in the seventies. There was another little conflict going on about then. I never got hurt, but like the dude said, 'shit happens.'
Who pissed on your cornflakes? Probably just a guy, like most, who join the military to get out of a small town, see the world, get a college education, and live a decent and well earned life. Shit happens.
"Now retired, "Wallrath dedicates about half of his time to this effort without pay."
All volunteer work need not be without pay, but a review of CharityNavigator.Org begs the question of where the line should be drawn.
As a small example: With 53 local chapters rated within CharityNavigator.org, Habitat for Humanity is an organization on a similar mission to Mr. Wallrath. However, the executive director of just the Atlanta chapter is listed as pulling down $169,886 annually for his volunteer efforts and this rate of compensation is more common than you think across all volunteer organizations.
On the one hand it takes money to make money; and money is how we value talent. To recruit donations from the country club community, you need to be a member. If only "work without pay" was permitted to be considered a tax exempt organization and no houses were built, clearly we would be worse off. But what if the salary in this example was reduced by about half?
At an annual salary of $90,000 would only half the houses in Atlanta get built?
United Way is/was notorious for million dollar salaries and fat pensions. Now that's charity.
wow.
If the government had to do this for each of its badly wounded veterans what do you reckon the chances are it might be a little more careful about how it deployed them?
The US Gov't treats it's war wounded [Koolaid Victims] as if they were food stamp applicants, its pathetic. How would you like to hop around on one leg? Reach for something (banana) with one arm? Nothing to hold on with? (no tail left). These war-wounded can heal their bodies but their brains are fucked. Unless they read Zero-Hedge. Think: The same military is battling Julian Assange.se
I'm not making a joke, these people gave parts of their body (if they lived!) for their government, who now prioritizes BANKSTERS above them, again- pathetic.
They would not give a rat's ass, as you would be paying for it, not the extra-US "government."
Thanks, you beat me to it.
Thanks Leo; many thanks for bringing this marvelous Christmas story to light.
Bill and Melinda Gates are uber fascists. They fund eugenic business enterprises. The ideology behind trying to find a reasonable way to not impregnate women and to not cause outbreaks of stds is gratifying, but big business has ransacked the dominant theories and sold these theories out.
Bill Gates has lost his mind. He's a Bilderberger now, snuck in last minute to Barcelona. He's doing some crazy shit to research cloud formation to prevent global warming. I wish spend his money researching the fraudsters peddling the fraud.
As long as there is money in global warming, there will be global warming.
Such is the effect of money.
Money created out of nothing, creating nonsense science out of money.
I didn't want to ask, but where does their money go? Another hoax.
You don't need to be Bill and Melinda Gates to give back to your community.
LIES. LIES. LIES.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/bill-gates-and-neo-eugenics-vaccines-to-redu...
http://www.breitbart.tv/bill-gates-death-panel-advocate/
That's the Spirit of Christmas, and proof that its alive on more than 1 day out of the year.
Bravo!