Volunteers build homes, hope for vet families

People who came of age in the Baby Boom can remember Southern California in the decades after World War II and the memories of would be road graders, bulldozers, ringing of hammers and nails and lumber walls standing up.

It looked like a time of exuberant energy and it was. Of the hundreds of thousands of homes built, many built and bought on the GI Bill, the legislation passed to let the GIs returning from history’s biggest war know that the nation was grateful for everything they did.

You could see young mothers with children in trail or in baby carriages, gazing at the homes being built for them. I remember the magic in the feeling of watching new homes under construction and new streets stretching out, fresh pavement on raw earth.

We have the sense of wonder. Rightly, we worry and wince when we see swaths of homeless shantytowns lining freeways and popping up in the desert.

We are right to wince and yes, we are right to be angry at the absence of solution. It’s a perfect mortal storm of spiraling rents, hopelessness after job loss, drug addiction and mental illness.

In Los Angeles County, we voted bonds by the billions and have seen little progress in housing the homeless. Like brief rain during drought, it’s not enough.

On one piece of raw earth in Palmdale, I have seen something that reminds me of the wonder I remember as a kid. It’s a development of zero-lotline homes, but well designed and of good quality. I chuckled, rather than winced, when I saw a street sign that announced “Glory Place.”

It’s a little lane in the Homes4Families development in central Palmdale. The more than 50 homes being built are giving lower-income veterans families access to the overheated Southern California housing market with terms that a normal human being can manage. Veterans help build their own homes.

“They are making a piece of the American dream available to the veterans and it is awesome,” James Mumma, a Marine veteran who graduated Palmdale High School in the 1980s, said. “They do more than that. They provide therapy and activities that give the veterans a way back home.”

On Saturday, a small team of High Desert Medical Group volunteers pitched in, with dozens of volunteers from the Boeing Co., PepsiCo and other corporate sponsors.

My teammates, Margaret Papa Louey and Thelma Glasco, joined me and a Navy veteran buddy, Lizeth Robertson.

“My son called me on the phone and he said, ‘Mom, what are you doing out there? You don’t even carry stuff when you’re walking around the mall,’” Glasco said.

She laughed, then joined in building a picnic table and shoveling gravel for landscaping. It is the power of positive purpose. A neighborhood needs more than homes. It needs playgrounds and shady spots, fences for safety and park benches. All of that will be there.

“I’m getting ready to go on Air Force active duty, but I am glad I could be here this morning,” Mike Shaub of Sentry Residential, said. He is an Air Force reservist who has donated hours of labor and love.

Glory Place runs into Gonzales Road, named for auto dealer Lou Gonzales, from AV Chevy. Lou is also an Army vet of the Cold War. “I worked on the wall around the development, but I have a back that won’t let me do that anymore,” he said. “But my wife Joyce and I can help with money.”

Financing is assisted by the City of Palmdale and the California Veterans Department, but Donna Deutchman, CEO at Homes4Families said, “It can’t be done without the volunteers and donors.”

The Hard Hats 4 Heroes building day looked like what the little street sign said. It looked like glory.