Home team: Carters return to city for St. James build

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This article was published 09/07/2017 (3012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s just a cutting board, but it’s a precious souvenir to Cheryl Pelletier’s family: it was handcrafted by a president.

Pelletier was a 30-year-old single mom with two kids when former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, helped build Habitat for Humanity homes in the North End in 1993.

“He did this area of the kitchen,” Pelletier said as she sat at her kitchen table recently and recalled the project in which her own home was constructed.

“He and his wife put the sink in,” she said. “He even said to me ‘I had a piece cut out for a cutting board. I made you a cutting board because you’ll need one for your kitchen.’

“I still have that cutting board, and I do use it.”

Pelletier had a seven-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter when the soft-spoken peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., worked on her home as part of the 10th Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project build for Habitat for Humanity on that day in mid-July. The build involved 18 homes on two new bays — Habitat Place and Giiwe Cove — just off Jarvis Avenue.

Carter was president from 1977 to 1981. After being defeated by Ronald Reagan, Carter and his wife started volunteering with Habitat and created the Carter Work Project to officially volunteer every year for a week. Winnipeg was the couple’s first Habitat build outside of the United States. Since then, the Carters have participated in builds in other countries, including Mexico, South Korea, India, the Philippines and Haiti.

This week, the couple will be back in Winnipeg. The former president is 92 and his wife is 89.

At last count, their project has built, renovated and repaired 3,944 homes in 14 countries.

The 34th Carter Work Project this week in Winnipeg and Edmonton will get it past the 4,000 home mark after 150 affordable homes are built. Twenty-one will be in Winnipeg, including 15 at the site of the former St. James police station on Lyle Street. Brandon and Portage la Prairie will get two homes each.

Only a select club of homeowners in the world can say a former U.S. president helped build their home, but Pelletier remembers Carter and his wife as just two more workers with the crew.

“He said “Hi.’ I spoke to him and his wife for a bit, but after that, they said they were here to do a job, and they did it. We talked for a few minutes and that was it.

“What do you say to a former president?”

Pelletier still has vivid memories of getting her own hands dirty while helping to build her three-bedroom home, including when she went up on the roof to nail down shingles.

“Going up on the roof wasn’t bad, it was coming down,” she said.

“When I was up there I said, ‘You better call the fire department.’ But when I was down, I was OK.

“I’d never go up today. I hired a company when I needed new shingles.”

Under the program, Pelletier provided 500 hours of ‘sweat equity’ and got interest-free mortgage payments for 18 years. She said it changed her life. She said she’d still be renting a home.

“I worked in a beverage room, both as a bartender and server, and I never would have been able to save up for a down payment, especially not now. House prices have gone up so much. Even this house is probably worth twice what it was originally worth.”

Pelletier said her two children, who are adults now, went to schools near their new house.

“They both graduated from high school. That’s really all I wanted. I wanted both of them to graduate.”

Pelletier estimates that out of the18 houses on the two bays, only about five Habitat homeowners still live there.

In addition to a photo of the work crew and a toolbox, she has a short plank of wood with the signatures of the crew, including Carter and his wife who signed “with love Rosalynn Carter.”

“Every homeowner got a toolbox with all the tools they needed,” Pelletier said. “I’ve since replaced all the tools — many went missing — but I still have the tool box.”

Pelletier does have some advice for the soon-to-be-house-owners in St. James.

“I hope they enjoy their houses, but look after them,” she said. “A lot of the expense will be keeping them up.”

Would Pelletier like to see the Carters again?

“It would be nice to see him again, but it has been so long,” she said, noting next year will be the 25th anniversary of when she moved in.

“He probably doesn’t remember me.”

Pelletier laughs: “That’s OK because you can see my son is sitting in Carter’s lap (in the photo of the crew who built her house). My son doesn’t remember him, either.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca