Habitat Homeowner -- Cheryl Eddins
By Marge Swayne
Reprinted with permission of The Farmville Herald
Cheryl Eddins can look out the window of the aging single-wide trailer she shares with two daughters and her 102-year-old grandfather and see a sight she never expected to see. A new home, built for the most part by inmates from Piedmont Regional Jail, is under construction. Cheryl Eddins will soon be a Habitat for Humanity homeowner.
“It’s called Prison Partnership,” explained Jayne Johnson, director of the local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity. “The way it’s set up is that the prison actually helps fund the build, and the inmates do the work. I believe we’re the only affiliate in Southside that has done a partnership with a jail or correctional facility.”
Cheryl Eddins has lived in the trailer on the Back Hampden-Sydney Road 16 years. A single parent, she has two daughters, Tiffany, 16, and Cheharri, 11. Currently, Cheryl works the night shift at Wendy’s.
Cheryl’s grandfather, Willis Lancaster, has lived in the trailer for 30 years. When he was younger he worked in tobacco, a sawmill before that. In June Mr. Lancaster celebrated his 102nd birthday.
When Cheryl’s grandmother died 16 years ago she moved to the trailer to care for her grandfather.
“Me and Tiffany moved on down here when she was a year old, and we’ve been here ever since,” Cheryl nodded.
The trailer is small for four people. Cheryl and her youngest daughter share a room, and Tiffany, the oldest, has the other bedroom. “My grandfather built his room out on the porch,” Cheryl related. A will to work is strong in the family. Cheryl, who is 43, usually works more than one job.
“I’ve been working all my life,” she said. “This is the first year I’ve worked only one job. I usually work two — leave one, come home, get dressed — go to the other job. That’s how I did it for a long time. When my car messed up I said — I can’t get from one place to another on foot. So I just work at Wendy’s now.”
When she doesn’t have a ride to work, a neighbor takes her, then her boss brings her home. “A lot of people have been really good to me,” she said. For years, Cheryl dreamed of owning a home of her own. “I had a down payment saved up one year on a trailer,” she said. “But nobody would give me one. I had basically give up.”
One day Cheryl saw a friend working in the yard and stopped to visit. “My friend told me Habitat was taking applications,” she smiled at the memory. “Habitat built her house.”
Cheryl turned in her application. In April she got the good news. “Me and the girls — we cried all day,” she said. “I was so happy. I started packing up the next week.”
Cheryl was also ready and willing to start working on her new home. “Cheryl has worked every time something was going on at the home site,” Jayne Johnson commented. “She’ll work from 7:30 or 8, whenever the crew starts, until they finish or she has to go to work.”
Each Habitat homeowner is required to put in 250 hours of “sweat equity.” “It’s required to work on your house and the other person’s house, too,” Cheryl advised.
Along with their mother, Tiffany and Cheharri have done their part. “The girls — both of them — go out around the home site and help pick up,” Johnson related. “They came in here and helped me stuff envelopes. Between the two of them they put in 30 hours — and they wanted to know then they could come back. I was very impressed with them.”
“Tiffany is trying to get her credits to graduate early,” her mother noted. “She really wants to be a nurse. She’s in ROTC too. Cheharri was failing a little bit in her reading and math, but she made a perfect score on her SOL’s. I was really proud of her.” Both girls are honor roll students. “They know they better not bring no “F” up in here,” Cheryl said. “I’m not having it!” Cheryl smiled, “They do OK. They’re good kids.”
Since construction started this summer, Cheryl and her family have learned many things about building a house. “Basically, working with the inmates, they will tell you what you’re doing right and doing wrong,” Cheryl said. “I was asking all kind of questions — what’s that for, what’s this for. They were telling me, and it made sense.” “Once our inmates got there and saw the condition of the house the family was living in, they really wanted to do the job,” related Lewis Barlow, superintendent of the Piedmont Regional Jail. “I was contacted last summer by Jayne Johnson, and we started making plans.”
All of the inmates who worked on the Habitat project were volunteers. “We don’t want them to work on the house unless they want to do it,” the local Habitat director noted.
When the project started, Elliott Irving, of WFLO, interviewed the workers. “He asked — ‘why do you do this?’” Barlow related. “Two of the inmates said the same thing. They grew up poor, they saw a chance to help somebody, and they wanted to do something worthwhile while they were in here.”
Barlow explained that four or five inmates did most of the work. “We happened to have two highly skilled professional carpenters as inmates at the time, and they volunteered to do the work,” Barlow noted. “I think they had the walls on it within two days. They did the walls, interior walls, the roof and the basic electric.”
Work went along quickly until Habitat ran low on funds to finish the house. “We’re building two houses at the same time,” Johnson explained. “We had the money to finish the first house, but we wanted to start on Cheryl’s house, hoping that the funds would come in.”
The local Habitat affiliate would like to have both families in their homes by Christmas. Donations of time and money will be needed to accomplish that goal. The regional jail superintendent affirmed the value of such a project for both the homeowners and the community.
“Habitat gives families ownership,” Barlow stated. “They can lead a normal life. There’s nothing normal about a 102-year-old man living on a porch.” While Habitat for Humanity, a Christian housing ministry, provides homes for those who might not otherwise be able to afford them, it is not a giveaway program. Homeowners must save up a down payment and pay monthly mortgage payments.
Cheryl learned about the system at a Habitat meeting. She tries to attend all the meetings, held the first Thursday of the month. “I was wondering when we pay our mortgage what it was going to,” she said. “They told us it goes for another house to be built.” Thinking ahead to the prospect of monthly mortgage payments, Cheryl added, “I know it’s going to be hard. Nothing’s easy. If you want something bad enough, you’ve got to work for it.”
“I’ve got faith in myself, and I’ve got faith in God,” she nodded. “We’ll be all right.”
Both Barlow and Johnson see the Prison Partnership program as a win-win situation — all the way around. At the center of this circle of community involvement are Cheryl and her family.
“Papa can’t wait to have his own room,” Cheryl smiled, eyes sparkling like a child the day before Christmas. “We’re all excited.” A relative of Cheryl’s grandfather has already promised a washer and dryer for the new house. “No more going to the laundromat,” Cheryl cheered. “I’m going to be so brand new!”
Cheryl looked around the cramped front room of the trailer that has been her home for many years and paused to reflect. “My grandmother raised me to take care of whatever little bit you have,” she said. “I do have good memories here. We’re not in the cold. We’re not homeless. We are blessed.”
Habitat for Humanity will make sure that blessing grows. Every Habitat mortgage payment will help another family share in the joy of owning a home. One thing is for sure. There will be joy in the Eddins home this holiday season — and for many more to come.
The Farmville Area Habitat for Humanity affiliate is one of the agencies that benefit from the United Way fund drive in Prince Edward. Donations specifically for completing Cheryl Eddin’s house may be sent to Habitat for Humanity, P.O. Box 816, Farmville, VA 23901 (note on the check — Eddin’s home).