Jimmy Carter marks 20th year with Habitat housing ministry

ANNISTON, Ala. -- His wrinkled face crossed with a look of concern and his shirt soaked with sweat, Jimmy Carter yelled down from atop a ladder before nailing a piece of lumber to an unfinished wall.

"I just want to make sure I'm doing it right," Carter, 78, called out through the steamy Southern heat.

After two decades of helping build homes for the needy, the former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner was, indeed, doing it correctly.

"He's a heck of a carpenter," said Lloyd Troyer, an old friend from Middlebury, Ind., and the supervisor at the site where Carter and more than two dozen other volunteers were working.

Monday marked the start of the 20th annual Jimmy Carter Work Project, a weeklong building blitz organized by Habitat for Humanity International, a Christian housing ministry based in Americus, Ga.

Almost 3,500 volunteers will use donated labor and materials to construct 92 homes in three Southern towns: Anniston; LaGrange, Ga.; and Valdosta, Ga.

Once complete, the modest homes will be turned over to low-income families who help with the construction and then repay interest-free mortgage loans.

Helping volunteers as her new home went up was an emotional experience for Jackie Bailey, who has three children and works at Anniston Army Depot making parts for tank turbines.

'People care'

"I've been crying a lot. It's overwhelming to know people care," said Bailey, 30, whose monthly mortgage payment will be less than half of what she currently pays in rent.

Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher from Plains, Ga., said the work is his way of living out his Christian faith. It also is a learning experience, Carter said.

"Every time I have been to a house and met a family, some of them desperately in need, I have learned that those people are just as intelligent as I am, and their family values are just as good as mine, and their ambitions are great, and they're just as hard-working," he said.

At homesite No. 15, one of many on a hilly street where most of the wood-frame houses will be built, Carter was joined by his wife Rosalyn and former Alabama first lady Lori Siegelman. They were building a three-bedroom, two-bath home of about 1,200 square feet.

The ex-president also worked alongside Mambo Mhkize, owner of a home built during last year's Habitat work project in Durban, South Africa.

Mhkize, whose travel expenses were donated, now lives in a 500-square-foot brick home with his wife and two children, ages 6 and 2. Life is better now than when they lived in a church-run shelter, Mhkize said.

"It is a deliverance from pity," said Mhkize, speaking over the sound of pounding hammers and high-pitched scream of an electric saw. "It is a place where you can share life with your kids."

Located about 60 miles east of Birmingham, Anniston is best known as the home of the Army's newest chemical weapons incinerator and an old chemical plant that is the subject of thousands of lawsuits by residents.

But Carter and Habitat founder Millard Fuller said Anniston was selected for the project for two other reasons: a longtime involvement in Habitat work and a community plan to eliminate substandard housing by 2020.

"Anniston is one of those precious places that has made that commitment," said Carter.

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On the Net

Habitat for Humanity International: www.habitat.org