The McCallie chapter of Habitat for Humanity began work on its 13th Chattanooga-based house this weekend and the group rekindled student interest and energy by introducing the Upper School to the owner whose family will be moving into their finished project.
The homeowner-to-be, an employee at Memorial Hospital and mother of three teens, will be on site with her children helping the students as the house goes from foundation to completion over the course of a few months’ worth of consistent weekend work by students from McCallie and Girls Preparatory School. She introduced herself to the students and expressed her gratitude for the work about to be done to give her and her children something she’d always hoped for but had never quite been able to attain: a home of their own, and all of the feelings of safety and stability that go with it.”Construction started Saturday in the warehouse where our under-16 year olds will build wall frames,” said Sumner McCallie, the long-time faculty advisor to the group. “We’ll take lengths of 2x4s along with door frames and window frames and using a pattern will put together sections that will become the walls to the house. Work will involve lots and lots of hammering. The segments we construct will be 6-15 feet in length. We’ll build them on table frames and then move them to the side of the warehouse for storage until the next Saturday when they will be what we erect on site as the walls.”
Work on site in St. Elmo — 57th and Alabama at the base of Lookout Mountain — will begin in two weeks when alumnus Eric Haralson ’65 comes down from Knoxville to help with completing and raising the outside walls. Mr. Haralson has been a valuable and enduring help to McCallie’s Habitat chapter over the years, officials said.
Dedication of the home is planned for Dec. 12.
“Over the course of the build, students will have the chance to frame and roof the house, build porches and sheds, hang siding and soffitting, install insulation, mount baseboards, paint, and finish with doors and fixtures,” said Mr. McCallie.
McCallie’s chapter received a $10,000 grant from State Farm last year, the only high school chapter to receive such a large amount. Members of the organization will travel to Chicago in October to speak at the annual Youth Leadership Conference.
In addition, the chapter took two Global Village trips, one to El Salvador last spring break, and one this summer to Argentina.
