25 days, 25 stories: Collegiate Challenge ‘95–St. Louis University spends spring break in Omaha

Each day from October 5 to October 29, 2009 we will be posting a new story in celebration of Habitat for Humanity of Omaha’s 25th anniversary. These stories have come to us from people who have been involved with Habitat Omaha in a variety of ways at some point in the past 25 years. We hope that you enjoy these reflections, some old and some new, about Habitat Omaha and that they inspire or renew the spirit of service in you. If you have a story of your own that you would like to share please send it to us at buildinghope.omaha@gmail.com.
 

Collegiate Challenge ’95

St. Louis University spends

spring break in Omaha

 
“Somewhere in Omaha, Nebraska there is a special family that probably won’t ever meet Megan Cavanagh. But those folks will owe a big thank you to Megan and her friends…and to many others involved in an eight-week nationwide Habitat for Humanity program this spring.

Megan, Margaret Baum, and Brian Christopher were students from St. Louis (MO) University. They didn’t know each other when they started. None of them knew Dale Oatman. But as they worked together rehabilitating an older Omaha house, they became friends. Soon that house (at 3183 Meredith) will be home to a special family that qualifies to buy it interest free, from Habitat.

The St. Louis students were spending their spring break doing volunteer work. Oatman wasn’t on spring break. He was already in his 50s by the time the St. Louis students were born. He’s the construction superintendent for all the Habitat projects in Omaha. Despite the age difference, the four worked well together and were particularly proud of one collaborative effort.

Megan, Margaret and Brian came to Omaha with seven others from St. Louis. Each had paid $125 for the “privilege” of spending a week sleeping on a church floor and doing hard, dirty work. Their leader was Kim Woods, a senior and student intern for the St. Louis University Campus Ministry. This was Kim’s fourth spring break on a work trip.

Yet what Kim and her crew did in Omaha was part of something much bigger. Besides the work group in Omaha, six other volunteer groups form St. Louis University worked on community projects around the United States the week of March 12-18. Counting Omaha, four of those seven were Habitat projects.

And that’s still not the whole story. Those four St. Louis groups were only a fraction of more than 5,000 students who did volunteer work for 104 Habitat chapters around the country February 18 to April 8 under Habitat International’s 1995 Collegiate Challenge program.

‘Just think about it,’ one adult volunteer urged: ‘That’s thousands of kids spending their own time and money helping other people. We should remember this whenever we get discouraged watching TV news.’

The St. Louis group in Omaha included two other young men besides Brian, and five other young women besides Megan, Margaret, and Kim; Nicole Dunn, Sarah Klein, Jenny Truax, and Chris Welling.

The whole bunch spent their first morning inside, tearing out old, crumbling plaster, making way for new wallboard. Jenny said the work was more intense than she’d expected; she felt good about getting one whole wall cleared that first day.

Some of them unhooked old steam radiators, then got sore muscles breaking them up with sledge hammers because they were to heavy to carry otherwise. After that, Sarah Klein, Sharon Farge, Katie O’Handley, and Fernando Munoz got a good start on installing new wallboard over the old plaster lathing they had uncovered. Kim worked with this group, too.

This special project Megan, Margaret, Brian, and Dale Oatman worked on: they built new back steps. Oatman showed them how and then let them do it. They had to redo one side four times. But on the last day, the three students and Oatman posed proudly sitting on ‘their’ steps.

Oatman has a special knack for helping volunteers do useful work and feel good about it. Brian was impressed. He’s worked on other Habitat projects and he said Omaha was better organized than many. Of course that wasn’t an accident. Oatman and his assistants had done lots of preparation work. The crew includes Tim Ernst and Todd Ahlstorm, construction assistants, and Dave Dietert, a full-time volunteer.

Oatman is impressed with the job the Collegiate Challenge workers do. ‘They are dedicated,’ he said. ‘They come here knowing about the importance of Habitat projects and they are prepared to work. When you’re able to have a group for a week, you can afford to spend time training them. They may not know each other beforehand, but in the course of a week, they develop a camaraderie and work as a team. They stay focused, don’t lose interest’…

St. Louis University is a Jesuit institution. All but one of the students in the Omaha group were Catholic. But in Omaha their home was in Pearl Memorial United Methodist Church. They bought their own groceries and cooked their communal meals in the kitchen. Hey slept on the floor of the adjacent meeting room.

Each night at bedtime they had a ‘reflection’ period. One night they all sat in the darkened sanctuary and thought quietly about the day’s work experience, what it had done for them and what they had done as a port of it. No one spoke and each person went silently off to bed when done. Sharon said that was one of the high points of the week for her…

During the Omaha work, Sarah and Kim spent a lot of their time on ladders, fastening new wallboard to the kitchen ceiling. As so often happens, they began to feel proprietary about it. On the last day, when the others were done and agitating to leave, Sarah and Kim insisted on securing their last ceiling sheet before they quit.

The last day happened to be St. Patrick’s Day. But, despite Irish names alike Megan and Katie, these St. Louis volunteers weren’t a green crew any more.”

James C. Rippey
Omaha Habitat Volunteer
(Written in 1995)

 

 

Visit the new habitatomaha.org to learn more about Habitat for Humanity of Omaha, find out about volunteer opportunities and to donate now.