On his first day at work at a Habitat for Humanity home-building site, John Little showed up at 7:30 a.m. and spent the entire day cutting logs with a chain saw.
By late afternoon, most of the other workers were ready to call it a day. But Little, who was putting in some of the “sweat equity” required to get his own Habitat home later, was still going strong.
Did we mention that John Little is 78 years old?
“He was amazing,” said Suzanne Wood, Macon Area Habitat’s executive director. “I had to make him go home. A lot of the other volunteers said that when it was time to build Mr. Little’s house, they wanted to help.”
Last month, the time came for Little and his wife, Maggie, 75. Twelve Macon churches representing several denominations got together to “blitz build” the couple’s home in about two weeks. The Littles got the keys to the Taylor Street home on Sunday and will move in within a few days.
The home for the Littles was the 20th built by Macon Area Habitat, but their case was unique in a couple of ways.
Most Habitat clients are people who were living in substandard or public housing. The Littles, who lost their original home to a fire in early 1995, were the first clients for whom the local Habitat agreed to build a house to replace one that had been destroyed.
In another first, the couple deeded the property where their first home sat to Habitat as the site for their new house. They will buy back the property using a 20-year, no-interest Habitat loan.
“Technically, we considered them homeless, even though they moved in with their daughter after the fire,” Wood said. “After 50 years of living at their own place, it had to be tough on them.”
World War II was just coming to an end when the Littles moved to their home, east of Macon.
It was a quiet neighborhood then, with just a few homes and families. The couple raised six children, and John Little ran a wood cutting-and-hauling business right on the property.
The area grew and changed over time, and not always for the better. Burglaries became common in the neighborhood, and the Littles lost one car battery after another to theft. But that was nothing compared to what happened that Sunday morning in February 1995.
Maggie Little got up, fixed her husband some breakfast and walked to her church a block or two away. John Little was dozing about 11 o’clock when a slight noise woke him.
He walked into the living room. That’s when he noticed bluish flames licking along the ceiling. Still clad in his pajamas, he ran outside.
Firefighters put out the blaze before the house burned completely to the ground, but nearly everything inside was destroyed. Word spread quickly throughout the neighborhood. Somebody ran to the church to fetch Maggie Little.
“It was the worst day of my life,” she said.
Fire investigators told the Littles that an electrical short may have caused the fire.
The couple remained in limbo until a friend recommended that they apply to Habitat for Humanity, which builds and sells homes through no-interest loans to eligible families with low to moderate incomes.
As with all Habitat clients, the Littles were required to personally put in 100 hours of sweat equity at other home-building sites before work on their house could begin.
“I enjoy hard work,” he said. “Young people nowadays don’t put much stock in that, but you should always take a chance to work and learn something new.”
As volunteer workers put the finishing touches to their sand-colored, five-room home, John and Maggie Little proudly posed for pictures in front of it.
“It really is a blessing from God,” Maggie Little said. “I’m real grateful to Habitat and all the volunteers.”
The church volunteers who built the home are also helping to furnish it.
“They wanted to go that extra mile,” Wood said, “because they were so inspired by the story of Mr. and Mrs. Little.”
