Neighbors pitch in to help disabled couple

Jedburg resident says joint effort is group's way of trying to 'change our world'

Ron Harvey

JEDBURG — This is a story of neighbors helping neighbors.

Residents of the New Hope community are helping a couple who adopted two boys and later became disabled. Louis and Carrie Grant weren't able to keep up with the house on Haynie Branch Road after their legs were amputated.

The yard filled up with trash, appliances fell through the floors, and sewage backed up under the house.

The yard looks a lot better after two dozen volunteers spent Friday morning filling up an industrial-sized container. But the work has just begun.

"We can't change the world, but we can change our world," said Ron Harvey, a life-insurance salesman who is spearheading the effort. "This is our world."

Carrie Grant worked for years as a nurse's aide. She lost one leg to diabetes in 2003 and the other in 2005.

Harvey remembers seeing her picking up trash in the neighborhood after her first surgery, walking with a cane on one leg.

"Everything changes," Carrie said recently as she sat on the porch in her wheelchair. "What we don't know if it's for better or worse."

Her husband, Louis Grant, lost a leg about four months ago. He was a custodian at a golf course and hopes to be able to return to work. He sat in a chair in a side yard Friday watching the yard cleanup.

"I'm glad they're doing it," he said. "When I was in good shape, I could keep up."

He recalled building the house in 1976, when it was on a dirt road.

Now the road is paved, and developers are buying up huge tracts of land nearby.

Their two boys are in high school. Rod, the younger one, cut weeds with a gasoline-powered weed-whacker Friday. O.J., the older of the two, pitched in here and there occasionally.

"I was starting to worry it was going to fall in," he said.

Harvey said he hopes the effort inspires the two boys.

None of the family can recall how things got so bad.

How it happened doesn't matter to the group trying to fix things.

Most of those picking up trash Friday were from Eagle Harbor, a boys' home across Haynie Branch Road from the house.

They were not allowed to be quoted but said they were happy to help.

Doyle Campbell, who lives nearby and owns a house-cleaning business, spent much of the morning replacing the wires and pipes to the pump that draws water from the well.

"It's an overall community effort," he said. "It's good to see when it comes down to it, people will help."

C.W. Chinners was operating a John Deere front-end loader he borrowed from a friend, dumping shovels full of trash into an industrial-sized bin that a trash company operator hauled in for free.

A tow truck driver was scheduled to haul a trash-filled Dodge van with no wheels or windows out of the back yard. Grant said he had a buyer for a Corsica with no right front wheel that also was sitting in the yard.

The house is beyond repair, Harvey said.

He's been talking with relief groups about moving in a trailer or building another house on the property and demolishing the old house.

"Sometimes we don't know what direction we are heading until we start down that road," Harvey said of the project.

Reach Dave Munday at dmunday@postandcourier.com or 745-5862.