Dec 26 – Watch “Designing Spaces®” on Lifetime TV
Last chance to watch this amazing 3 part series.
Starts Dec 25
7:30 am ET/PT
Through “Designing Spaces®” on Lifetime TV and Project Homeward Bound, Earthcore partnered to donate a beautiful Isokern outdoor fireplace and kitchen, to a most-deserving Jacksonville disabled veteran and his family. Project Homeward Bound is dedicated to raise awareness about disabled veterans coming home who are suffering from PSTD, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and the sacrifice they have made for our country. See how Earthcore created this beautiful outdoor space for them and see an interview with our CEO, Carl Spadaro. Don’t miss this exciting 3 part series airing again on Dec 25 through Dec 27 at 7:30am ET/PT. (Earthcore will be featured on Dec 26)
This is the first Home for this Jacksonville, Florida Veteran:
For months disabled Iraq war veteran Jeffery Taylor and his wife, Tracy, had been speculating about what their new Jacksonville home would look like, inside and out. When they and their three children finally got to see it Friday, the Army private first class said they were stunned.
“Everything we had dreamed about, times a million,” said his wife.
They were also stunned by how the house on a quiet Mandarin street came to be their home through Purple Heart Homes. The national nonprofit matches disabled Purple Heart recipients with donated foreclosed homes.
The 2,300-square-foot, ranch-style house was donated to the cause by Bank of America as Purple Heart Homes’ first project in Florida.
The house was renovated with donated services from RTF Construction, as well as donated hardware, fixtures, interior furnishings and structural goods. It was all put together in about a month’s time by hundreds of local volunteers from Bank of America, GE Aviation Veterans Network and other businesses and groups.
“I can’t come up with the words. Thank you is not enough. This is the first home I have ever owned in my life,” Jeffery Taylor, 36, told them all at a post-“reveal” party in his backyard. “It is crazy to think that somebody … would help build a home for a person they don’t even know. I can’t even express how I feel.”
He said he hoped to help out on a future Purple Heart Homes project for another military family, like Marine Corps veteran Derrick Pope of Hickory, N.C., did for him. Pope, whose home was renovated by the nonprofit about six months ago, was among the volunteers working on the Taylor home.
“I can’t do much,” Taylor said, “but I can do some things.”
Taylor, who along with his wife is from Putnam County, served with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. He was critically injured when his crew’s vehicle came under mortar attack just outside the Baghdad airport, causing it to roll into a canal with Taylor trapped underneath. He was rescued but left with a crushed leg, nerve damage, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and hearing loss.
Purple Heart Homes was co-founded by wounded Iraq veterans Dale Beatty and John Gallina.
At the party, Gallina called the help a “hand-up,” not a handout: Taylor will be paying a mortgage of 50 percent of the home’s market value.
“It’s not enough to bring you home,” Gallina told him. “We want to lift you up.”
The kind of community support that came together to renovate the Taylor home, he said, is critical for veterans to reintegrate into society.
The crew of “Designing Spaces” filmed the renovation and subsequent reveal for a three-part series that will air in September.
By Beth Reese Cravey
