Editor’s Note: This story is part of our series “Helping Hands”, which aims to spotlight Johnson Countians doing good in the background of their community. If you have an idea for someone to spotlight in a future “Helping Hands” story, email us at stories@johnsoncountypost.com.
It’s not often that one spends a weekend fixing up someone else’s home, voluntarily — especially someone they don’t know.
But earlier this month, retired health care executive Jim Brown and local developer Kevin Tubbesing used their Saturday doing just that.
That day’s work served as part of what the pair do for Rebuilding Together Shawnee — a local affiliate of a national nonprofit that provides free home repairs and maintenance for residents who financially or physically can’t tackle it themselves.
After several years of volunteering with the organization, Brown and Tubbesing took positions on the local group’s board of directors this past summer.
Rebuilding Together is a volunteer-based group
The repairs that the group undertakes range from fixing lights and cleaning gutters to sprucing up yards and constructing ramps and other accessibility-enhancing features for residents with mobility challenges.
The organization also coordinates with the city of Shawnee’s volunteer program Neighbors Helping Neighbors, which takes on smaller-scale home repair projects and often partners with Rebuilding Together Shawnee for larger projects.
Since taking on their leadership roles, Brown and Tubbesing have overseen four projects so far, with a few more in the works in the coming months.
“The focus of it really is to make individuals’ homes safe and livable,” Brown said.
As part of their first tasks as leaders for Rebuilding Together Shawnee, this year’s board of directors moved the application process online to provide an alternative to mailing in an application.
Though it primarily serves Shawnee, the group hopes to eventually expand to serve other parts of Johnson County, Tubbesing said.
“We do want to increase the capacity, whether it’s just handling more (projects) within a Shawnee-centric area, or whether we actually come out all through Johnson County,” he said. “It’s just really going to be a matter of time and how things grow organically.”
The projects often impact Shawnee’s oldest residents
While anyone can apply for assistance, Brown and Tubbesing said generally the services provided by Rebuilding Together Shawnee tend to most directly impact older adults and people with disabilities.
In the case of Shawnee’s older residents, Tubbesing noted, being able to repair and maintain their houses often makes a difference in how long those residents are able to maintain their independence in their own homes.
“I think there’s a lot of hidden need in the city, and this provides an opportunity to help those that otherwise don’t really know where to go when they’re trying to stay in their homes,” Tubbesing said. “They’re often longtime residents who want to stay here. So you know, we’re very proud that we have the means and the skills to help them do so.”
A lot of repairs and home maintenance might seem fairly simple to some people, Brown pointed out — but residents with new physical limitations as a result of aging might find them more difficult to tackle if they lack support.
Ultimately, he said, seeing a resident moving around their home more easily and getting satisfaction from maintaining their independence is the best part of what Rebuilding Together Shawnee does.
“That’s the best part, just helping the people and seeing the benefit they get out of it,” he said. “Seeing the actual outcome, where people can utilize whatever it is we did, or that they can stay in their house longer because of what we did.”
Feeling the impact
Earlier this year, Brown, Tubbesing and their fellow volunteers built a ramp at the home of Shawnee residents Robin and Sue Leslie.
The Leslies have owned their Shawnee home for more than five decades. In recent years, it has become more difficult for Robin to get around and use the stairs to the house’s front door with his new walker.
The solution: a new ramp leading down to the driveway and an attached large front landing area with more space for Robin’s walker. The Rebuilding Together team also threw in a table and some porch chairs for the Leslies to sit in.
“Before, (Robin) was not able to get outside at all. He was kind of almost homebound,” Sue said. “This has made it so much easier for him to get outside and to get him up and down, to go to the doctor’s offices and stuff like that.”
The organization’s volunteers also threw in some other small fixes, like repairing the Leslies’ drying machine and installing new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
“It’s just made such a difference for us, what they’ve done,” Sue said. “There’s no way that we would be able to afford the type of work they did on the outside of the house. It’s just been a big blessing for us to have it done, and I appreciate all they’ve done for us.”
Valerie Dykes — daughter of Shawnee resident Janice Bracken, who is a recent recipient of Rebuilding Together Shawnee’s services — also felt the difference the group can make earlier this month.
Rebuilding Together Shawnee’s volunteers took on various fixes at Bracken’s home, ranging from landscaping and installing a new handrail on her porch to working on plumbing and accessibility repairs in her bathroom.
Bracken has lived in her current Shawnee home for more than a decade. With a recent hip replacement and other mobility challenges, it’s become more difficult for her mother to move through the home, Dykes said.
Bracken herself was in the hospital for most of the project’s duration, Dykes said, but she was able to return home post-surgery and see the finished project.
“Her desire is to stay independent,” she said. “You could just tell it was kind of an overwhelming kind of feeling for her, and grateful — I know how grateful she was.”
It wasn’t just Bracken who felt the impact, either. With the passing of Dykes’ father and mother-in-law this year, Dykes said it has been a challenging year for their family.
So to watch the repair project take shape and feel the burden of those repairs come off of their family’s shoulders, she said, had a tremendous value.
“We were standing there just thinking, ‘This is a blessing beyond anything that we could really accomplish ourselves,’” she said. “They came without hesitation, understanding that this work is in order to have an 84-year-old woman be able to live independently and safely in her own home. I think that was on their minds, and you could tell.”
Ultimately, Brown said, helping to ease each other’s burdens is part of what makes a community. In the end, he said, he hopes the efforts of himself and his fellow volunteers can inspire others to roll up their sleeves and help their neighbors out too.
“Everybody wants to have a strong community, and everybody wants to have nice neighborhoods,” Brown said. “People just have an innate desire — at least I do — to realize, I’m lucky enough that I can do some things for myself, and if somebody else can’t, then I want to help them.”
Related news: Helping Hands of Johnson County: Terry Loudermill with TEAM Mentor Olathe
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