Volunteers with the Katy Home Savers Association carry materials up the new wheelchair ramp they built at Ray McFarland's home, once a dorm at Prairie View A&M University. Photo by Michael Stravato

Summary:
• AARP volunteers in Katy are helping improve people’s lives, one refurbished house at a time.
• Program helps older people stay in their homes longer.
• Volunteering helps people stay mentally and physically sharp.

Pat Gorman took one look at the exposed wall and did what he had to do.

Swinging a hammer in hundred-degree heat, Gorman, 75, smashed the venomous snake coiled inches from where he’d been working.

It was all in a weekend’s work for the Katy Home Savers, a volunteer group made up primarily of AARP Texas members, who repair homes of older people in the area.

“Our motto and our creed is to be out there in the community,” said cofounder Pat Baker, an activity director for a senior center. “It is who we are: volunteers.”

The Katy Home Savers believe people should age in the home environments where they’re most comfortable, Baker said.

Photo by Michael Stravato

Pat Gorman, 75, paints the porch ceiling as Ray McFarland looks on from inside his century-old home.

The house with the water moccasin was Home Savers’ biggest challenge yet: salvaging the rural home of Ray Pearl McFarland. Still burly after two decades with a spinal injury, the 65-year-old McFarland motored around in his electric wheelchair as two dozen Home Savers volunteers worked on his home, once a dorm at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university founded in 1876.

In February, a physical therapist who had worked with McFarland at his home had pleaded with Katy Home Savers to build McFarland a ramp. But when volunteers saw the century-old structure, it was clear far more was needed.

The group spent about $19,000 to replace siding and boarded-up windows, craft front and back decks and make the bathroom handicapped-accessible. “I’m proud of it,” McFarland said.

The group’s origin goes back three decades, when several Katy-area oil industry engineers joined a nonprofit home-repair group in Houston. But the Katy residents longed to work in their own community, 45 minutes away.

When Baker became Katy AARP chapter president in 2002, she organized a local home repair group in response to AARP’s Day of Service—drawing from some of the original volunteers who are now AARP members. Four years ago the team became Katy Home Savers—a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Its 501(c)3 status allowed it to accept donations from corporations. Those contributions helped the Home Savers complete six projects totaling $10,000 in 2008. The projects are not restricted to AARP members and are tackled as money is available.

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