Tina Sanders could barely speak.
The wall raising for her Habitat for Humanity home on Valparaiso’s north side was put on hold because the ground was too soft. Instead, her supporters and speakers for the ceremony moved indoors Saturday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Porter.
Sanders and many of the people in the room wore blue T-shirts noting Habitat’s National Women Build Week. This is the third year the Porter County chapter has participated in the build.
More significantly, Sanders’ new home is the first the chapter has done for a veteran. Sanders is a veteran of the U.S. Army who spent much of her military career in mortuary affairs, first working in Iraq to ship soldiers’ remains home to families, and then looking for the remains of soldiers who were missing in action in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
Sanders, 35, and her daughter, Katlynn, 15, will move from their Chesterton apartment in the coming months into their new home.
“It’s still very surreal that I have all these caring people,” Sanders said, crying as she looked around the room at the VFW. “I appreciate everything. I wish my daughter was here to talk for me but it means the world to me.”
Her parents, Pam and Rollie Sanders, presented her with a statue of a woman soldier for her new home.
“It looks a lot like her because she always wears her hair in a bun,” Rollie Sanders said through misty eyes.
Pam Sanders said her daughter and both her siblings – one is a twin – also enlisted in the military.
“It was very difficult to let them go, and better to see them come home,” she said.
In all, about 150 women are contributing in some way to building Sanders’ home, said Kelly Longhi, Habitat’s director of volunteer experience. The women’s build is being done in conjunction with Lowe’s in Portage, which sponsored several workshops for participants.
“We want to empower women to do things they might not think they can do,” she said, adding the walls to the home will go up next weekend.
Malcolm Cole, manager of the Portage Lowe’s, said he has seen the impact a soldier’s service has on their family, and the sacrifice soldiers take on for the freedom people enjoy.
“You’re raising your daughter and being a strong woman and taking care of business,” he said, adding he has strong women in his life, too. “They showed me gender means absolutely nothing when it comes to raising your family and achieving what you want to achieve.”
Barbara Biernat, a board member for the National Association of Women in Construction who lives in Crown Point, said she was moved by Sanders’ “incredible courage.”
“You can do 100 percent of whatever is asked of you in this project, and you will never find a more worthy person than Tina to do a project for,” she said.
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
