The Miller family accepts the keys to their new Habitat for Humanity home at 22 Battey Drive on Sunday. Pictured are Charlie Miller (from left), Barrett Miller, Quintavius Miller, Valerie Miller and J.P. Cooper of State Mutual Insurance. State Mutual donated the home to Habitat. (Doug Walker / Rome News-Tribune)
Relatives shared the joy as the Miller family took ownership of their new home built through Habitat for Humanity at 22 Battey Drive in West Rome Sunday. Pictured in the front are Quintasia Miller, Charlie Miller holding Quintyra Miller, Quintavius Miller and Valerie Miller. In the back are Angie Miller (from left), Broderick Miller and Barrett Miller. (Doug Walker / Rome News-Tribune)
“It’s a big deal,” Miller exclaimed.
Miller, her husband, Charlie Miller, and son, Barrett Miller, will share the home, which was the product of an Apostles Build.
The majority of volunteers came from First Baptist Church, Oak Hill Church of Christ, Second Avenue Baptist Church, Trinity United Methodist Church, First Presbyterian Church and Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church.
State Mutual Insurance of Rome donated the house to Habitat for Humanity. The company has a mortgage portfolio and the house had been foreclosed.
“It was a good house in a good neighborhood, so we thought it would be a good fit for Habitat,” said J.P. Cooper of State Mutual Insurance.
Valerie Miller said her family had been living in an apartment on Tolbert Street and the new home was truly a blessing. She said a friend of hers had suggested that she apply to Habitat.
“By the grace of God they called me and told me I had been accepted,” Miller said. “I was so surprised. Whew, it was really good.”
Rome and Floyd County Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Bruce Day said the home was the first existing home that Habitat volunteers had been called on to rehabilitate, as opposed to building one from the ground up. He issued a special thanks to crews with Brooks Building Group who helped with the project.
Wayne Evans, a Habitat board member representing Second Avenue Baptist, presented the Millers with a hammer — symbolic of Jesus as the Master Carpenter — while Cooper presented the family with the keys to their new house.
The three-bedroom home features a handicap-accessible bathroom off the master bedroom. Charlie Miller is disabled and gets around in wheelchair, so that bathroom was tremendously exciting to family members.
“If it weren’t for Habitat for Humanity, the people that I’ve met and fallen in love with as a family… I just want to say thank you all for this wonderful, wonderful house,” Valerie Miller said. “I’m just so happy.”
Post a Comment