Valley family spends first holidays in donated home

KNIK - Jim and Sherry White didn't have a lot planned for Christmas.

A quiet dinner, a few modest presents exchanged, but that was just the tree-topper on a wonderful holiday season, Sherry said.

"This house is our Christmas present," she said.

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman began telling the White family's story in 2009, after Jim lost both legs to peripheral artery disease.

After that story ran, a local do-gooder by the name of Israel Nelson connected with the family. Both had been frustrated navigating the public health care bureaucracy. The experience had left Jim penniless and in debt, living in a leaky trailer. Nelson decided to help.

Last August, Jim, Sherry and their kids moved into a brand new house right next to the old trailer that Nelson and dozens of other Valley residents brought to life through donations of cash, materials and labor.

"It was a miracle, a godsend, there was no way I could have ever provided for my family like this on my own," Jim said.

The story of the fundraising came out in bits and pieces. Retired people donated. Children donated. The Mat-Su Home Builders Association stepped up to spearhead the project. In-kind donations came in from hardware stores and private residents. At one point, $10,000 just magically appeared in the project's bank account.

"I try to look at this and say, ‘What did I ever do to deserve any of this?'" Jim said.

"Having this reminds me of that movie, ‘It's a Wonderful Life,'" Sherry said.

Specifically, she's reminded of the scene at the end where the entire community turns out with enough donated money to save George Bailey's savings and loan. She said that like the character made famous by actor Jimmy Stewart, she'd all but given up hope.

"Boy, they came through and we will never ever forget that," Sherry said. "We don't have much of anything, but if anybody needed anything we would sure try to help."

As for what the house has meant for the Whites, it almost seems like once they start naming things they won't ever be able to stop.

For one thing, the place is designed to work with Jim's wheelchair - the doors are wide and the counters low enough. There's a master bathroom he can use when he gets up at night. In the trailer, he had to navigate his way all the way through the trailer to the bathroom.

The new house has a much more efficient wood stove so they're not feeding the fire every two hours all night like their old stove.

"One night I fell asleep sitting in front of the woodstove and I fell forward and I smacked my head right into the door of the woodstove and it took me a minute to get away from it," he said, since the stove was too hot to touch. "I had to stop and think what can I grab on to?"

The new place is also well insulated, unlike those inch-thick walls in the trailer.

"We don't freeze in this house when the power goes out," Sherry said.

There's a garage, too, which is awesome for Jim, who has always been a tinkerer, cobbling together little mechanical gadgets to solve various problems.

"It's a competition between me and my sons as to who gets the garage to work in," Jim said.

"But I always make sure that there's room for the van. We've gotten spoiled now a nice warm vehicle to get into," Sherry added.

What's the best part of the new house? It's clean, dry, and there's no mold.

"The main thing is that everybody has been healthy now," Sherry said.

Sure, they'll pass around a cold or the flu, but it's nothing like the constant ailments they had in the old place.

The new place isn't quite finished yet. It still needs siding. Jim joked that he's not the only house in the Valley with Tyvek siding and that maybe it'd be better to leave the siding off - keep his tax bills lower.

Nelson's charitable program has just about the right amount of money to put it up and plans to do that next spring, Jim said.

As for the old trailer - Jim's not at all sentimental.

"I'm going to tear it down. I'm going to burn what can be burned and probably haul the rest of everything to the dump," White said.

By the end, the old trailer had a leak in the roof so bad they set up a 10-gallon bucket they had to empty hourly when it rained hard, Jim said.

"Actually it was 25 gallons," Sherry teasingly corrected him.

Jim said he looks at that leaky, sagging building now and wonders how he ever managed to live there. He said he plans to salvage anything that's valuable, like the copper wiring. Sherry said she'll make sure everything that's usable gets a good home.

"If any of the neighbors can use any of it we'll let them have it," she said.

Asked what they'd say to anyone who donated, both Jim and Sherry said it's hard to express just how grateful they are.

"We can't afford to buy a big ad in the paper, but we want to make sure that everybody knows how much we appreciate this and we want them to have a merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year, and we are so grateful," she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.