extreme makeover piece
TRANSCRIPT
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MAYOR
LAUGHLIN
AND NOW, A WORD FROM
(EVERY MONTH.STARTING NOW)
WHY IT’TOUGH TO
BE AJETS FAN
SUPERBOWL XLV
DENTIST?NEED A
LOOK NOFURTHUR
WHATCOLORIS LOVE?
CH2CELEBRATES
VALENTINE'S DAY
F E B R U A R Y
2 0 1 1
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EXTREMEHOME EDITION
JANUARY 12TH, 2010.
It’s 6 a.m. on a cold Wednesday morning. The bright January
sun starts to rise over the north side of Beaufort County, its first
rays illuminating an empty home on the outskirts of town. The
sidewalks are swarming with people, the roads filled with cars.
On the site where a new house will soon stand, an elderly couple
hammers nails out of a plank of wood. Stopping briefly to exchange
loving glances at one another, the two have worked tirelessly
through the night trying to get their jobs done. As their shifts are
called to an end, they turn to the person working to their right: a
sweat-covered young man half their age and twice their size. They
smile at him, shake his hand and say how glad they were to meet.The satisfied volunteers ride the shuttle back to their cars and
drive away happy and excited to see the rest of the project unfold.
Things are going well after the first day and a half of Beaufort
County’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build, yet the build
supervisors, frantically assigning tasks to the next batch of
volunteers, are too busy to care. They have one week to build a
new house for a family in need. In their minds, things can never go
well enough.
NOVEMBER 24TH, 2010
Six weeks earlier, William Court and James Atkins, co-
founders of the Beaufort County-based architecture firm Court
Atkins, were entrenched in a three-hour conference call with Todd
ARTICLE BY LUKE KERR-DINEEN
EXTREMEMAKEOVER:
PHOTO BY AMY CARROLL
P H O T
O B
Y
C H A R L I E H E Y M A N
PHOTO BY PAUL NURNBERG
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OTO BY CHARLIE HEYMAN PHOTO BY AMY CARROLL
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Hawk, founder and CEO of H2 builders, Inc. “I got a call from
Todd in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday saying that he
needed to meet with both of us the next morning at nine o’
clock,” recalled Atkins, “I was like: ‘Now? William isn’t even in
town…Can’t it wait?’”
No, it couldn’t.
“So the next day I’m knee deep in this three-hour conference
call,” said Court, “and my wife is wondering, ‘What could be so
important to interrupt our vacation?’ Of course, when I hung up
and told her what was going on, needless to say everyone was
pretty excited.”
The bizarre manner in which Court and Atkins found
themselves involved in the EMHE Beaufort project is hardly a
surprise when considering the coincidental way they found each
TODD HAWK (H2 BUILDERS) AND HIS WIFE TRACEY AND SON HUNTER.
other in the first place. The two had attended the University of
Cincinnati at the same time, each eventually graduating with
honors, but they did not meet until 1995 while both interning at
a Bluffton architecture firm. The two became friends, opened
a joint venture a few years later, and now they employ interns
from the University of Cincinnati pool from which they were
drawn.
Yet the partners were quick to note that the excitement
which accompanied such a high-profile invitation soon subsided
amid the realization of one harsh reality facing their industry
today: The economy is still hurting. State-wide unemployment
rates have been setting record highs while housing prices have
dropped to record lows. The economic downturn of 2007
affected both Court Atkins and H2 Builders—people just haven’t
been building as many houses.
Working their way out of the mess Wall Street had started,
Hawk, Court and Atkins had now stumbled onto a project that
required them to donate labor, materials, time, energy and all
their creativity throughout the holiday season until the house’s
slated January completion date. To make matters even more
challenging, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had just finished
a build in Savannah a month earlier. The fear was that the same
PH OT O BY
CHARLIE
HEYMAN
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show in Beaufort might be impractical or perceived as unoriginal
by the surrounding community.
“There was probably a flurry of second thoughts,” conceded
Court, “but James and I just sat down with our staff, told them what
was on the table and asked for their input. They were unanimous
in wanting to do it. We all just agreed that the joy of changing
one family’s life forever, in the end, outweighed everything else.”
Hawk had his architects—they would start working
immediately— and now he would start enlisting the help of the
other 50 or so sub-contractors needed to make a dream project
like this a reality. Next he made calls to three Beaufort County-
based companies: Grayco, J Banks, and World Design Marketing.
They each came aboard shortly, and three more essential pieces
of the puzzle fell into place. Grayco agreed to supply and lead theinstallation of lumber needed for the home. “We just believe in
paying it forward. We know how good this community is, and that
what goes around comes around,” said Grayco general manager
Ben Tomilson. “Our only goal is to do good for this family so they
can get the happiness they deserve.”
J Banks Design Group, a Hilton Head Island-based interior
design firm, started in 1986 by Joni Vanderslice, signed on next.
Named one of the fastest growing businesses in South Carolina in
2010, and with a diverse business portfolio boasting projects all
over the country as well as in Italy, France, and Spain and an in-
house design library among the biggest on the East Coast, J Banks
has been left largely untouched by world-wide recession. The task
of furnishing the EMHE VIP tent was more an opportunity for this
thriving local company to continue their longstanding tradition
of using their good fortune to give back. Since 2003, J Banks hasdonated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to local charities and
has also established a now-thriving orphanage in Tanzania titled
“The Valentine Project.” For this local firm, Extreme Makeover:
Home Edition Beaufort County was just another way to give back.
The call to World Design Marketing was a no-brainer for
Hawk. The award-winning local advertising and marketing firm,
founded by former Disney marketing director Wayne Johnson,
has hit several home runs for Hawk and H2 Builders over the years.
This request however—to act as the organizational hub, marketing
and public relations arm and the official voice of the build—would
require a major commitment from the WDM staff. Whether it was
members of the press wanting to talk to Hawk, companies who
wished to help sponsor, or interested citizens who wanted more
information, WDM would be the place to call. Branding, website,
CHEF ROBERT IRVINE WITH ATTENDEES OF THE DINNER POSSIBLE FUNDRAISER.
P H O T O B Y
A M Y
C A R R O L L
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print ads, speech writing, press releases, e-mail blasts, logos,
slogans, banners, T-shirts, daily Facebook and Twitter updates,
would all be produced by World Design Marketing staff members
donating their time and marketing savvy to EMHE Beaufort
County cause.
DECEMBER 2010-JANUARY 2011
Just three weeks after Hawk was approached about the
planned Beaufort County build, an official announcement was
made to the public. “Everything moved so fast,” said Susan
D’Anna, account manager at WDM. “When people watch the
show, it’s natural to think that there’s a ton of planning going on
behind the scenes, but it’s really not like that. Everything comes
together very quickly and we had to be on top of our game.”
Once the announcement was made, people from Beaufort
County and beyond were flooding the website with volunteer
applications; companies from all over wanted to give anything
they could. Chef Robert Irvine, Food Network star and Hilton
Head Island resident, was in the middle of filming his show:
Dinner: Impossible, when Wayne Johnson contacted Irvine about
EMHE. “I wanted to get involved from the second I heard about
it,” Irvine said. An avid participant in the renowned Make a Wish
Foundation and a proud veteran of the Royal British Navy, Irvine
said he fell in love with the family from the minute he heard their
story. “We all have struggles in life,” Irvine continued. “It’s not a
question of if, but when, and there’s something redeeming about
stepping up and giving back and helping others. We’re all just
custodians of this planet, and spending a little time giving back
makes me feel as if we’re all in the same family, and that no matter
what, we can get through any hardship. I’d like to think that if I
ever fell on hard times, I would be able to depend on the people
around me to help me out, too.”
On January 4, 2011, more than a thousand people packed
into the LowCountry Community Church for the EMHE Pep Rally
and heard for the first time that Chef Robert would be hosting a
gourmet dinner fundraising event for the family, themed Dinner:
Possible. The proceeds from the soon-to-be sold-out event would
be used for the mortgage and maintenance on the new home.
One of those men in the pep rally audience that night was
Mike Covert, CEO of the Covert Aire, a local air conditioning repair
company. As he listened to Chef Robert and the excitement of the
roaring crowd around him, Covert made a personal commitment
to help with the project in any way possible. Founded in 2007,
Covert Aire is a young and growing company. Providing the air
conditioning for the EMHE home was simply outside the realm
of possibility. The company is much too small, and Covert Aire
doesn’t even do air conditioning installation; they specialize in
repairs. Still, Covert felt strongly that he had to do something—
contribute to the cause in some way—so he walked outside after
the rally and bought more than $2,000 worth of tickets to Dinner:
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Possible. Eventually, Covert Aire also became an official corporate
EMHE Beaufort County sponsor. Why? “Simple. It was the right
thing to do,” said Covert in his humble southern drawl. “What an
unbelievable experience; why would we sit and let something like
this pass?”
The perfect embodiment of what Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition is all about.
JANUARY 11TH, 2011
On Tuesday, Ty Pennington and his crew ambushed The
Dickinson Family, and the site for the newest Extreme Makeover
was revealed: 45 Mystic Circle, Beaufort, SC. Marine Staff Sergeant
Bill Dickinson is in his 17th year of service for the United States
Marine Corps and has been deployed in Afghanistan since early
November, 2010. His wife India and their five children are left
behind trying to live in a flood-destroyed home with a cracked
foundation and unhealthy mold invading every wall. The house
is un-sellable, and with each day in the house, the Dickinson
children get sicker.
Ordinarily, a standard home building project—from
conception to finished project—takes between eight to ten
months. The client calls an architect to start configuring a
layout. The builders would be involved throughout the process
and would start work as soon as the house blueprint is fully
finalized, usually around the three-month mark. The whole
process is designed to be a very formulaic, organized and
efficient one—every step executed according to a specifically
arranged plan.
The plan for the EMHE build was slightly different. The philosophy
was simple: Get in and get it done—fast. “We’ve had some pretty
demanding clients before, but no one has ever asked me to build a
house in a week,” said Hawk. “It’s not like we can move the bus and
then explain to the family why we didn’t have time to get the roof on.”
The EMHE production crew demolished the Dickinson’s
home four hours later than scheduled, and the race to catch upwas on. Clean-up duty extended into the night, and construction
started in the early hours of Thursday morning.
JANUARY 14TH, 2011
Hawk, Court and Atkins were on site day and night, closely
monitoring and recording every movement the blue-shirted
volunteers were making. There was no order to the chaos, and
INDIA DICKINSON REACTS TO HER NEW HOME ON A TELECONFERENCE WITH
HER HUSBAND BILL.
P H OT O BY
P A UL N URNBE R G
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yet it all got done, smoothly and seamlessly. The house’s wiring was being installed the same
time the walls were being built; the windows were installed before the roof was finished—all
was according to plan.
David Justini walked into the construction beehive on Friday evening, day two of the
build. His company, Porch Outfitters, had three porches to install on the 4,000-sq.-ft. house.The standard timeline for a project like this: two days. The timeline allocated to Porch
Outfitters to complete the project: less than 12 hours. “I’m just loving every second,” said a
defiant David Justini earlier that day. Justini had been lured into the project earlier than most
and seemed more and more confident as his time to work drew closer. Three porches in a
few hours? That was easy; Greenhouses? Now those were difficult.
“We’re going to have so many men working on this lot, there’s not a doubt in my
mind we’re going to be done in time,” said Justini. His prediction proved true. When he
and his crew packed up their tools, they left in their wake three beautiful porches the
Dickinson family will surely enjoy for years to come.
“It’s just good to know that we helped do something good for a member of our
community,” Justini said. “I’m honored to be a part of it.”
JANUARY 18TH 2011
The bus moved on the Tuesday following the family ambush, the mold-ridden house
with the cracked foundation at 45 Mystic Circle had been replaced by a stunning, two-story
Lowcountry masterpiece. At one point in the build, construction had been almost a day
behind, but somehow, it all managed to come together. When she saw her family’s beautiful
(and healthy) home, an overwhelmed India Dickinson thanked God. An exhilarated Todd
Hawk hugged his wife and son before shaking the hands of those around him. The crowd
cheered, the Marines roared, and the Dickinson children wept with joy.
It was a good day in Beaufort County. !