Warm hearts help heat cold home
Veterans couple get brand new furnace with help from an HVAC firm and a local pastor
Raymond Webb wasn’t sure how anyone except his wife, Stacey, knew that their furnace was on the blink. They hadn’t told anyone.
He sat on the couch in his home in Braddock trying to figure that out Friday morning while two men who work for J&A HVAC, of South Park, were in his basement installing a new furnace.
“I was stunned, overjoyed,” he said, describing a phone call he got last week from J&A’s owner, Anthony Passatore. “The house has been really cold. We were trying to heat it with the oven. Somehow we became a candidate for a new furnace. This is a blessing.”
He had not told the Rev. Mike Wurschmidt about his bad furnace, but caring people notice things. The pastor had been in the Webbs’ home many times.
“I have known they didn’t have good heat,” Rev. Wurschmidt said. “So when Anthony called me a couple weeks ago, I knew whom I wanted him to donate a furnace to.”
Rev. Wurschmidt has known Mr. Webb for 20 years.
Mr. Passatore has coordinated with Home Depot Pro to donate a furnace to a needy recipient for the past two years, he said. This year, he wanted the recipient to be a veteran, “and it won’t be the last. My motivation is to give back to veterans, to make a difference in someone’s life.”
He found Rev. Wurschmidt, whom many people call Pastor Mike, the way many connections are made:
One person tells another person who knows someone who knows a guy.
Mr. Passatore is a regular at Gianna Via’s Restaurant in Whitehall. One morning, he heard a lively social scene in the restaurant’s party room and asked the restaurant’s co-owner, Tony Machi, what was going on.
“Every Thursday we do a special breakfast for veterans,” Mr. Machi said. “Most are Vietnam vets. We have anywhere from 70 or 80 to over 100. Anthony said he would like to get involved by donating a furnace to a needy vet. I talked with the guy who runs the breakfast and he knew Pastor Mike. When I called Pastor Mike, he said, ‘Oh my God, I have the perfect people for a furnace.’”
Rev. Wurschmidt is the founding rector of Shepherd’s Heart, an Anglican church in Uptown, and executive director of Shepherd’s Heart Veterans Home, which shares the same building.
“I met Ray at the VA, where I am a chaplain,” he said. “He was in the homeless program, and when he graduated in 2000, I hired him. He’s been instrumental in a lot of what we do for veterans. He and Stacey are on my board of directors.”
Mr. Webb said he was a supervisor with the program and is now supervisor emeritus. “I got sick and had to leave that,” he said. “I came back from a double heart bypass and valve replacement. I’m on oxygen. I have a chair,” he said, nodding to his wheelchair, although he is able to walk short distances. “It’s been a little trying. But no one expected me to live, so every day I take a breath is a good day.”
The duplex the Webbs live in had previously been donated to Shepherd’s Heart for homeless veterans, Rev. Wurschmidt said, “and we gave it to Ray and Stacey. We try to help them however we can. Ray was a tank commander in the first Desert Storm, and he went through so much coming back from the war.”
The Webbs live on disability income. He served in the Army, she in the Marines. Both have had health problems, but they have been as active as they can volunteering, Rev. Wurschmidt said.
They met through the Department of Veterans Affairs and began volunteering for Shepherd’s Heart and Operation Safety Net, a Pittsburgh Mercy program whose staff intervenes on the streets to help people get into emergency and transitional housing.
The pastor is an Air Force veteran, but his understanding of his flock goes deeper.
“My wife and I were both homeless in Denver,” he said. “The reason we do what we do is because of what we went through. We give back now out of thanks for having another chance.”
Helping the Webbs keep their house up, the Wurschmidts have summoned Habitat for Humanity to shore up the front and back porch. They also procured a new water heater for them.
“We have done different things to help them, and I knew it was a matter of time before that old furnace would die.”