Travis Hearn house takes shape
TODAY: (Updated 3:18 p.m.) By 7 a.m., exterior walls, interior stud work, roof trusses and a roof already stood on the concrete foundation where injured Rock Island High School football player Travis Hearn and his family will soon live.
As 1:15 p.m. rolled around, crews were feverishly putting down tar paper and shingles on the particle board roof as dark clouds gathered.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Watch the QCTimes.com slideshow to see volunteers build the Travis Hearn house.
“We want to get the roof covered before it starts to rain,” said Kristi Crafton, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, which coordinated building of the structure.
Ann Randle, sat on her porch across 8th Street in Rock Island and watched as the ant hill of activity at the building site moved the house toward completion by 11 p.m. Thursday. If the crews are successful, it is believed to be the first Habitat house that will be completed from scratch in less than 24 hours.
“I got up at 6:15 a.m., and they didn’t have the roof on,” Randle said. “They had the foundations already done, but everything else has been built today. It’s exciting that he is getting a place built just for him.”
A carpenter for Golden Builders of Bettendorf, Jeff Sparks, said he was there to help in any way he could. That meant making use of his skills to put up walls and work on the roof.
“It’s a tragedy what happened to him,” Sparks said of Hearn. “He has a tough time ahead, and anything I can do to help out, I’m glad to do it.”
More than 1,000 volunteers on six shifts were expected to put together the 26-foot by 40-foot house on what was once a park in the 900 block of 8th Street in northwest Rock Island.
It is located among mostly older houses, some of which are boarded up and abandoned. But there are signs of new life in the neighborhood. Besides the Hearn house, another Habitat house was finished recently on the same parcel. A new row of townhouses is not far away at 9th Avenue and 9th Street.
Crafton said the house was specially designed for Hearn, who was paralyzed from the neck down after he was injured in a Sept. 22 football game.
Indeed, among the special features built just for the 17-year-old Hearn are wider hallways to accommodate a wheelchair, a generator to power medical equipment if the electricity cuts out, a larger-than-normal bedroom with a shower off to one side that he can get into on his own and a ramp off a deck at the rear of the bedroom that rolls gently to a cement parking pad.
“There is also extra support in the floors to accommodate the medical equipment and wheelchair,” Crafton said, adding that the house will be the 46th one built in the Quad-Cities by the agency since 1993.
But this was far from a normal construction job, Crafton said. For one thing, a crane was on hand to help the volunteers move equipment and materials. Rock Island building inspectors were on hand continuously to examine every phase of the work. And rank-and-file volunteers were buttressed by seasoned building trades professionals such as Sparks who also volunteered their time.
And instead of the usual three to six months of work that goes into a Habitat house, this one is being substantially completed in a single day.
Hearn was expected to show up at the site to view the house and the workers, said Gwen Stovall, his grandmother.
“He hasn’t even seen the site yet or the design,” she said of her grandson who now lives in an apartment at Friendship Manor in Rock Island. He is scheduled to move into the new house with his family on June 16.
“He’s not feeling too well today,” Stovall said. “For the past two weeks, he’s been having fevers and headaches.”
Stovall was excited about the activity at the work site.
“This is just remarkable seeing the community come together for something like this for someone they don’t even know,” she said.
When everything is finished, the house is expected to cost $105,000 to build. The city of Rock Island donated the land, which will eventually include seven Habitat houses, and a host of sponsors contributed everything from building materials and food to cash to make the project possible, Crafton said.
Wells Fargo Bank has been a long-time contributor to the work of Habitat, said John Stavnes, bank president. On Thursday, a crew of volunteers wearing gold bank logo T-shirts also showed up to haul, hammer and do whatever else was asked of them.
“Every community says it is a good place to live and to raise a family, but you never really know until the game is on the line,” Stavnes said during a news conference about the project. “It was important in this case to step up and do the right thing.”
Terry Timmerman, who coordinates volunteers for Habitat, said his efforts on behalf of the project were particularly gratifying because, a year ago in April, he broke his neck during an accident and his doctor told him that there was a strong chance that he would not walk again.
Through therapy and sheer determination, Timmerman is back on his feet. At the dusty construction site, he was doing his part to be sure that Hearn will have a decent, functional house in which to live, he said.
“This project has a particular place in my heart because about a year after I broke my neck and I’m helping to build a house for a young man who broke his neck,” Timmerman said.
Tony Martin, who lives in the 900 block of 9th Street, said he has known Hearn “since he was a little baby” and is looking forward to having the family live just a short walk away across his back yard.
“I love him dearly, and I’m going to love having him in the neighborhood,” he said.
Tom Saul can be contacted at (563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com.