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Rhode Island Builders Help Military Families
 When Army reservist Chris Potts and his wife Terri bought their fixer-upper in Tiverton, R.I. two years ago, their plan was to make repairs and cozy up the place as time and money allowed.
When they found out Chris’ unit was shipping off to Iraq, the couple was in the thick of the project. They put it on hold until Chris’ return.
But Chris didn’t return to his home. Sgt Christopher Potts, a member of Alpha Battery, First Battalion, 103rd Field Artillery, U.S. Army Reserve, was killed in action in Tagi, Iraq, in October, 2004.
In the months that followed, Chris’ fellow reservists helped a grieving Terri and her two children as they tried to make a new life for themselves. When Rhode Island found itself awash in record-breaking rains last fall, the Potts’ basement family room was flooded. Members of Chris’ old unit pulled out the sodden carpeting, furniture and drywall. “There was nothing left but the ceiling tiles,” said builder Bob Baldwin, who learned of their plight in late 2005.
Baldwin and fellow members of the Rhode Island Builders Association found out about the Potts family because they had just decided to launch a new charitable initiative, Builders Helping Heroes. Based on a similar program in Florida, Builders Helping Heroes provides construction assistance to veterans with special housing needs who have been injured in combat since Sept. 11, 2001.
The association’s volunteers and staff kicked off the program last month in a ceremony that included top elected officials and military officers in the state, but Baldwin and his fellow builders started the work in December, when the Army told them about the Potts family.
 “The situation was pretty difficult for her,” Baldwin said. Between the half-started renovation work and the flooded basement, “the house was in pieces.” Baldwin put together a scope of work on Friday, Dec. 16. And then he started to work the phones.
Innovative Construction volunteered a team to do some carpentry. Builders Surplus Inc. donated doors. Crews descended on the Potts home the following week to replace millwork and moldings and hang exterior and interior doors, and Steve Schmidt of Trinty Painting and his crew painted all the bedrooms, living room and hallways.
“Everybody pulled together and these guys worked very hard,” Baldwin said. “It was really rewarding the first time I saw her smile. I had never seen Terri smile, ever.”
Now, Baldwin and a cast of volunteers are working on the design phase for more work: a new mudroom off a remodeled kitchen, work in the basement and a permanent solution to the home’s recurring water and flooding problems.
Getting all that work done the week before Christmas was “almost a miracle,” Baldwin said. But the credit goes not to the volunteer crews, but to the service men and women that Builders Helping Heroes is set up to help.
“We’ll never be able to repay these people for the sacrifice they have undertaken for this country. What they do on a daily basis, picking up that gun or strapping themselves into that fighter plane, these are the people who do their best to make sure that what happened Sept. 11 doesn’t happen again,” Baldwin said.
“The bands stop playing, the TV cameras go away and these soldiers have a permanent situation they’ll have to live with for the rest of their lives,” he said. “Freedom isn’t free, and politics aside, these are the guys who pay the price so that you and I can conduct our lives and raise our families and not worry about being blown up.”
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