Framing a future: PCHS students build walls for Habitat

Framing a future
Platte Canyon students build walls for Habitat for Humanity home as part of Kindness Day

By Barbara Ford
Staff Writer
Platte Canyon High School students celebrated Kindness Day by picking up hammers to help frame a family’s dream.

About 120 students worked on the old football field on Friday for Blue Spruce Habitat for Humanity and future homeowner Tammy Marshall and her family.

Kindness Day, on Sept. 25, is part of a week of remembrance for Emily Keyes’ life and to celebrate random acts of kindness. Emily was held hostage by a gunman and then fatally shot at Platte Canyon High School on Sept. 27, 2006.

Tiffany Seybert, a social studies teacher at the school, is a driving force for Kindness Day and the kids’ involvement in the Habitat project. The students put their endless energy into building not only a home but also a dream.

“This is the first time we had Habitat out here,” Seybert said. “We’re going a lot faster than we thought we would.”
Natalie Gonzales was a friend of Emily Keyes and is glad the school is keeping Kindness Day alive.

“This year, building the house, this is really nice, and it’s bringing our school together,” Gonzales said.

Students hammered and temporarily raised Marshall’s new walls. Everyone could look at the skeleton structure and envision what the house will look like. Most kids signed the structure with best wishes and poignant thoughts.

One inscription on a window frame read: “Good luck with this house built by high school kids.”

Blue Spruce Habitat for Humanity, based in Evergreen, is helping Marshall lay out a plan for her future.

Pandora Reagan, Habitat development director, said applicants must undergo a rigorous process to qualify. Applicants must be able to afford the mortgage payments for the new home (estimated to be 25 percent of income), and they must undergo a credit check and a home interview.

“The neediest families need to get the house,” said Reagan.

Applicants must also volunteer 250 hours for Habitat for Humanity.

“It’s important that they work alongside the people who are giving,” Reagan said.

Marshall works two jobs seven days a week to make ends meet. She works at Conifer High School as a food service worker and works weekends at a local horse ranch. Most weekends, her son, Cody, 13, and daughter, Bobbie, 12, go with her to work. Despite her busy schedule, Marshall doesn’t complain.

“I love both of my jobs,” Marshall said. “God gave me two jobs that I like.”

The walls the students built on Sept. 25 will be stored until next year. Habitat for Humanity and its volunteers don’t build in the winter, but come next spring Marshall and her family will have a new home.

Marshall, now single, didn’t think she could make it on her own but has watched the generosity of strangers frame her dream for the future.

Today,” she said, “it actually feels like it’s real.”