How to help
* Go online at www.homeforourtroops.org/lindsey; contacts and needs for the projects are listed on the page.
* Monetary donations can also be submitted online.
* To donate to the food brigade, contact Cynthia Willard at cynmwillard@yahoo.com.
* The build brigade will begin at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 19 and last through Feb. 21.
* Go online at www.homeforourtroops.org/lindsey; contacts and needs for the projects are listed on the page.
* Monetary donations can also be submitted online.
* To donate to the food brigade, contact Cynthia Willard at cynmwillard@yahoo.com.
* The build brigade will begin at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 19 and last through Feb. 21.
On a snowy January day, Joshua Lindsey found it difficult to leave his Colorado home.
The challenges of winter weather driving aside, it’s more problematic to get his wheelchair through the snow.
The 24-year-old disabled Army veteran doesn’t always have an easy time in his home, either.
Unreachable glasses fall from his cabinets and break, and he can’t do his own laundry.
But soon, the corporal will be enjoying the sweet smells of the South that he loves and the freedom of an accessible home.
Homes for Our Troops, a national nonprofit, has selected the Georgia native to receive a wheelchair-accessible house, which will be built over three days next month in Cumming.
The organization was founded to give homes to injured veterans who need them.
Volunteers from the organization and the local community will put up the majority of the structure.
“We have yet to have a community that has not embraced, welcomed and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’” said Vicki Thomas, spokeswoman for the group.
Lindsey will be there too. He’s planning on driving from Colorado with his two dogs, Lexus and Leila.
The average cost of building a home is about $275,000, funded through monetary and labor donations, Thomas said.
Since its inception in 2004, the group has built 50 homes, with 33 still in the works.
Thomas said Lindsey’s house will include everything to make life easier for a wheelchair-bound man. Amenities will include a roll-in shower and wheel-under counters and stovetop, as well as wider hallways and doorways.
“It’s things that we don’t think about when we’re looking at our own house,” said Cynthia Willard, a local volunteer with the brigade.
Willard’s main responsibility is to feed anywhere from 50 to 75 people who will be working on the house each of the three days.
She’s already seen a big response from the community, but added, “There’s always a need for more people to be involved.”
The local Veterans of Foreign Wars post has big plans for the project as well.
The Ladies Auxiliary will be baking and providing food. Tradesman from the group will donate labor to the house and others will do whatever they can to help, said Joe LaBranche, VFW member.
LaBranche said the VFW plans to extend a lifetime membership to Lindsey and looks forward to being a part of Homes for Our Troops.
“It’s a heck of a thing they’re doing for the veterans,” he said.
Homes for Our Troops’ founder John Gonsalves is a home builder who wanted to get involved in building homes for injured veterans when he realized no group yet existed.
“He saw these men coming home so severely injured and thought, ‘What happens to them now?’” Thomas said.
For Lindsey, who enlisted at age 17, life as a paraplegic is not what he had planned.
“I went from thinking I was going to have a career in the military and not really having anything to worry about,” he said. “I had a lifelong track. I had goals.”
Those goals changed in 2005 after Lindsey was wounded in a mortar and sniper attack during a patrol in Amarah, Iraq. He had been trying to reach a wounded solider, who later died.
Lindsey was hospitalized for months in bases in Iraq and Germany. More treatment followed in California before a 10-month stay at an Army hospital in Georgia.
“When I got back, I couldn’t move and whatnot ... but it really didn’t sink home until I got the paperwork,” he said.
“It was like, ‘This is what you’re going to get for the rest of your life and you need to contact the VA, because on the 15th you’re out of the Army forever. It was like, ‘What am I going to do?’”
What he has done is struggle to live in a few apartments, one of which led him to drag his wheelchair behind him as he scooted up two flights of stairs.
He eventually moved to Colorado, just outside of a government preserve, and onto 148 acres.
A hunting enthusiast, Lindsey thought the move would give him plenty of time and space to enjoy his hobby on a four-wheel drive wheelchair.
Though he got some grant funding from the VA for ramps at the house, the money wasn’t enough to make the home completely accessible.
“It’s just not workable for me,” he said. “Being secluded and everything out here, and away from medical attention, it’s just not good for me.”
Lindsey got to pick the location of his new home and his floor plan.
The isolation of the winter months and a desire to move back South led Lindsey to pick Georgia, close to his fiancee’s family and a clinic for physical therapy.
“I really love being out in my yard,” he said. “That’s the thing I can’t wait to do in Georgia.
“It’s just so green and luscious in Georgia. I miss it so much. The humidity and just the smells in the fall when they’re burning the hickory. That’s Southern living right there.”
The challenges of winter weather driving aside, it’s more problematic to get his wheelchair through the snow.
The 24-year-old disabled Army veteran doesn’t always have an easy time in his home, either.
Unreachable glasses fall from his cabinets and break, and he can’t do his own laundry.
But soon, the corporal will be enjoying the sweet smells of the South that he loves and the freedom of an accessible home.
Homes for Our Troops, a national nonprofit, has selected the Georgia native to receive a wheelchair-accessible house, which will be built over three days next month in Cumming.
The organization was founded to give homes to injured veterans who need them.
Volunteers from the organization and the local community will put up the majority of the structure.
“We have yet to have a community that has not embraced, welcomed and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’” said Vicki Thomas, spokeswoman for the group.
Lindsey will be there too. He’s planning on driving from Colorado with his two dogs, Lexus and Leila.
The average cost of building a home is about $275,000, funded through monetary and labor donations, Thomas said.
Since its inception in 2004, the group has built 50 homes, with 33 still in the works.
Thomas said Lindsey’s house will include everything to make life easier for a wheelchair-bound man. Amenities will include a roll-in shower and wheel-under counters and stovetop, as well as wider hallways and doorways.
“It’s things that we don’t think about when we’re looking at our own house,” said Cynthia Willard, a local volunteer with the brigade.
Willard’s main responsibility is to feed anywhere from 50 to 75 people who will be working on the house each of the three days.
She’s already seen a big response from the community, but added, “There’s always a need for more people to be involved.”
The local Veterans of Foreign Wars post has big plans for the project as well.
The Ladies Auxiliary will be baking and providing food. Tradesman from the group will donate labor to the house and others will do whatever they can to help, said Joe LaBranche, VFW member.
LaBranche said the VFW plans to extend a lifetime membership to Lindsey and looks forward to being a part of Homes for Our Troops.
“It’s a heck of a thing they’re doing for the veterans,” he said.
Homes for Our Troops’ founder John Gonsalves is a home builder who wanted to get involved in building homes for injured veterans when he realized no group yet existed.
“He saw these men coming home so severely injured and thought, ‘What happens to them now?’” Thomas said.
For Lindsey, who enlisted at age 17, life as a paraplegic is not what he had planned.
“I went from thinking I was going to have a career in the military and not really having anything to worry about,” he said. “I had a lifelong track. I had goals.”
Those goals changed in 2005 after Lindsey was wounded in a mortar and sniper attack during a patrol in Amarah, Iraq. He had been trying to reach a wounded solider, who later died.
Lindsey was hospitalized for months in bases in Iraq and Germany. More treatment followed in California before a 10-month stay at an Army hospital in Georgia.
“When I got back, I couldn’t move and whatnot ... but it really didn’t sink home until I got the paperwork,” he said.
“It was like, ‘This is what you’re going to get for the rest of your life and you need to contact the VA, because on the 15th you’re out of the Army forever. It was like, ‘What am I going to do?’”
What he has done is struggle to live in a few apartments, one of which led him to drag his wheelchair behind him as he scooted up two flights of stairs.
He eventually moved to Colorado, just outside of a government preserve, and onto 148 acres.
A hunting enthusiast, Lindsey thought the move would give him plenty of time and space to enjoy his hobby on a four-wheel drive wheelchair.
Though he got some grant funding from the VA for ramps at the house, the money wasn’t enough to make the home completely accessible.
“It’s just not workable for me,” he said. “Being secluded and everything out here, and away from medical attention, it’s just not good for me.”
Lindsey got to pick the location of his new home and his floor plan.
The isolation of the winter months and a desire to move back South led Lindsey to pick Georgia, close to his fiancee’s family and a clinic for physical therapy.
“I really love being out in my yard,” he said. “That’s the thing I can’t wait to do in Georgia.
“It’s just so green and luscious in Georgia. I miss it so much. The humidity and just the smells in the fall when they’re burning the hickory. That’s Southern living right there.”