New life for Mount Olive

KING WILLIAM Much of Leon and Barbara Brooks' lives are stuffed inside two 40-foot containers in the front yard of the modest trailer they call home.

The trailer was supposed to be temporary.

Leon, a retired aircraft technician with the Virginia Air National Guard, and Barbara had planned to build a new home after moving to King William County in 1998.

When Leon Brooks stumbled upon "a fallen state of humanity," however, the new house got pushed aside.

He put his family's life on hold, but he's helped give new life to a community in need.

The Mount Olive Project took shape in early 2003 after years of failed attempts to address the needs of the families living along Mount Olive Cohoke Road.

Many of them didn't have indoor plumbing, running water or central heat. They relied on outdoor portable toilets and wood stoves, and gathered water every day in milk jugs and buckets from a nearby church, or a spigot on a water tank down the road.

County officials were considering condemning the homes, said Supervisor Daniel L. Wright. Two attempts to get federal grants had failed.

But that was before Brooks got involved. He lived about a mile from the Mount Olive community, and he got to know his neighbors by working with community groups that served the area in such efforts as remediation programs for students.

Brooks was associated with the county's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and became its president in 2000. He's no stranger to civil-rights issues. In 1992, Brooks complained about the use of a Confederate flag image in part of the Air Guard's uniform patch. He was terminated from the Guard around that time and was ultimately reinstated by then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who ordered new insignias.

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In 2003, county officials tried again for a grant, but this time, they asked Brooks if he'd be responsible for a self-help portion. Grant money would pay for renovations or new homes, but he'd be in charge of a volunteer community effort to install water and sewer lines when new homes were built.

Without that piece of the plan, the county most likely wouldn't get the grant, Brooks said he was told.

"I had no choice," Brooks said, and as president of the NAACP "my duty is to serve the people."

"It just so happened that the Lord had allowed me the skills to do these types of things," he said.

The county won a $1.4 million contract from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development in December 2003. An additional $1 million in indoor-plumbing rehabilitation funding came from the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project.

Work began immediately for Brooks and five senior volunteers from the community.

They laid water and sewer lines in one area of the community and hooked up the pipes to a pump station. They removed dilapidated homes that had been demolished, and Brooks estimated he hauled away at least 100 truckloads of debris and junk from around people's homes.

The difference is remarkable.

Since 2003, 28 homes have been torn down and replaced with one-story, vinyl-sided ranchers.

Two other homes were renovated and brought up to code.

The new homes are 768 square feet for twoand three-bedroom residences, and about 1,000 square feet for those with four bedrooms. They come with kitchen appliances and washers and dryers.

A representative with Bay Aging, the organization overseeing the construction and other parts of the grant, estimated that the homes cost about $40,000 to build, not including new septic systems and wells.

The homes carry 10-year, no-interest liens. The goal is for the houses to be owned by their occupants at the end of that period. Residents pay what they can afford. Some have yet to make a payment. Admission into the program has been governed by a set of guidelines that take into account such factors as income, number of family members and ability to pay.

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While Brooks said the project is about 75 percent complete, he's hit a wall.

Three of the men who were helping him died in 2007, and the other two stopped working for health reasons.

That leaves Brooks to finish close to a mile of sewer lines and a half-mile of water lines for 26 new homes by himself unless he can find more help. One of those homes belongs to Irene Garlic.

She and her family moved into it this month. They have central heating and soft carpet but still walk down the street for water every day and use a portable toilet in the backyard.

Even without those conveniences, she smiles when she looks around her new home.

"I love this one," she said.

Sara Stamp is project manager with the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission, which oversees the grant's budget. She recognizes the difficulty in finding volunteers for the self-help portion, though the county wouldn't have been competitive had it asked for money to hire contractors for that work too, she said.

But "to leave [residents] in the homes to wait for the water and sewer, it's a real challenge," Stamp said.

Looking forward, Brooks is optimistic.

Looking back, he says he had no idea what he was signing himself up for five years ago.

"I haven't done anything since 2003 but physically work every day for this grant," he said. "My family's suffered."

For all his efforts in the Mount Olive community, Brooks doesn't get paid. He and Barbara live off the small disability check he receives each month. They don't take vacations. Brooks got rid of his cell phone to cut costs and a 1969 Corvette that has seen better days will wait longer for restoration.

"You don't get paid for this exercise," Brooks said. "God Almighty is in charge of this thing."

Then there's the new house. It's been hard living in a trailer, Brooks said, but as NAACP president he decided he shouldn't build a new home until the grant work was finished..

"How could I build a house . . . and all the people around you are living so bad?" he said. "Me building a new house would defeat the purpose of leadership."

He credits his wife for her support throughout the project, joking that no woman with any "good common sense . . . would have stood for such foolishness. She would have to be a special kind of lady to put up with this kind of mess."

Brooks says there are many others who deserve the credit for what Mount Olive has become.

"It's not just about Brooks," he said. "There are so many other elements that make a wheel turn."

"We're just grateful to have come this far," he said. "As soon as this grant is over, we'll go back to plan A."

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Contact Holly Prestidge at (804) 649-6945 or .