Neighborly 'Makeover'

Nash County residents join effort for popular show

One moment put Ashley Denton’s whole spring break in perspective.

It is a moment with which millions of fans of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” are familiar. The show’s host, Ty Pennington, stands next to a family who is about to see the new home for the first time and yells, “Bus driver, move that bus!” Then pandemonium breaks loose.

After seeing it countless times on television, being there live was more powerful than anyone could imagine, Denton said. She and three other Nash County residents volunteered from March 10 to 13 to help build a home in Jamesville in Martin County for the Cooper family.

“We realized at that moment, we are not just here for a TV show. We are here to actually help this family and touch them. So that was a really unique experience. It was pretty emotional,” said Denton of Nashville.

Thousands of volunteers showed up to build the dream home for an episode of “Extreme Makeover,” which airs at 8 p.m. May 3. Denton volunteered with her brother, Adam Denton; her cousin, Jessica Denton of Sharpsburg; and a friend, April Williams of Rocky Mount.

Since the program

debuted in December 2003, it has helped hundreds of deserving families who have gone through some tragedy or hardship by building them new homes, said Diane Korman, the show’s senior producer. With the help of local construction companies and volunteers, a house is torn down and rebuilt in seven days while the family is on vacation.

“The hardest part of the show is selecting just one family to help in each region. We get 1,000 to 3,000 applications per week,” Korman said.

The Jamesville house was built for Jeffrey Cooper, his wife, Clara, and their children, Windy and Aaron. Cooper is a former Army combat medic who suffers from multiple sclerosis, immune disorders, a collection of symptoms commonly called Gulf War illness and is confined to a wheelchair.

Cooper devotes his time to lobbying for legislation to benefit North Carolina veterans.

The Coopers didn’t know until they opened their front door on March 6 that they had been nominated for the show, much less chosen. The double-wide mobile home they lived in was rundown and not equipped for Cooper’s wheelchair.

“We were in a house that was falling down around us. The house had shingles that had blown away. The roof was rotten. The floors needed to be replaced. It wasn’t a very pleasant place to be. I was in a wheelchair, and the house was not designed for that. I couldn’t even get in the kitchen with my family to have dinner for the past number of years,” Cooper said.

The new house, a large log cabin, has given Cooper a freedom he hasn’t experienced in years.

Denton never met the Coopers, but she saw their reactions to the new house and loves that she was able to play a part in their fresh start. She first learned of the opportunity to volunteer with the show at East Carolina University, where she is a senior, and encouraged the others to sign up with her. The group drove more than an hour each day to the building site.

Though the four of them signed up to work for food services, by the second day, they were helping with the building, said Adam Denton, who will attend Nash Community College in the fall. Throughout the course of the project, they did a little bit of everything.

“We had these large pieces of scaffolding that we had to carry and put together so they could touch the rafters and work. That was a whole lot of work and took a lot of time. Then there was site cleanup, just the raw materials that you had to clean up that they didn’t need,” Adam Denton said.

Pretty much if you were on the building site, a producer would grab you to do something, Ashley Denton said. In one of those instances, she and her cousin were sent to assist designer Michael Moloney inside the house. It was the highlight of the week for Ashley Denton, who already was a fan of the show. She is glad she didn’t stick to her original spring break plans when she got the e-mail confirming her as a volunteer.

“I was kind of thinking maybe a beach trip with my friends. After I got that e-mail, I thought that was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I decided to do that instead. I don’t regret it at all. It was an amazing experience,” Denton said.