Castleton Spartan

Issue date: 9/12/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Charles Smith Workers, including Castleton Students, help build a home in Athens, Vt. as part of the Extreme Home Makeover show.

At a time when the rest of the Castleton campus was sleeping, there was a group of students, awake and ready, waiting for their chance to change a family's life forever.

In the parking lot behind Ellis Hall, 40 or so students crowded into school vans and departed for Athens, a town far south of campus.

Their destination was the build site for Extreme Home Makeover, where they and hundreds of other volunteers and workers would be building a home for the Vitale family -- a mother, Sarah, a father, Lou and two sons Kane, who is 3, and Louie Angelo Jr., who will be turning 2 this month.

Their younger son Louie, was diagnosed with several birth defects, which include club feet, arthogryposis, skeletal displasia, all of which force him to eat through feeding tube, spend his life in a wheelchair and give him extreme difficulty with breathing.

When the Castleton community heard about this wonderful child stuck in a terrible situation, they answered the call for help, and answered with vigor.

"It's a fantastic volunteer turnout," said Bill McGrath, a construction worker with the McKernon Group, and one of the men overseeing the build. "I never envisioned this number of people, it's incredible."

Perhaps more incredible is what it's taking to get the job done. McGrath said that a job of this magnitude usually takes six months. They would be doing it in four days. To do it, they needed help. Including the McKernon Group, there are about 25 other construction companies helping to build the house, and all of the workers are going at it 24-7, with 74 people in each shift.

"We got some guys that have been working 32, maybe 34 hours straight," McGrath said.

The construction effort certainly did not go unnoticed.

Kirk Sullivan, who has been working with the show for four seasons on shows that pertain to medical issues, loved what the McKernon Group was doing: helping Extreme Makeover build an entirely "green" house.

"This is the very first time we've gotten to work with a dedicated and knowledgeable green builder like the McKernon Group... so I like to say that on this episode Extreme has truly gone green," Sullivan said

Continued...

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