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Thousands apply coats of kindness
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- Six-year-old Brenan DuCataile burst into his mother's bedroom as the sun came up Saturday and tugged on her shirt. Wake up! Wake up! he told her. With her excited son at her side, Velma DuCataile, 39, crept out of bed and poked her head out the front door. Across the street at her neighbor's house in Ybor Heights, a crowd of people wearing white T-shirts were laughing, with paint brushes in their hands. The mayor was there, too. Good, she thought, smiling. Someone is finally painting the white shotgun house where Rosa Edilla, who is in her 70s, lives alone. At 100 different homes across Tampa, a similar scene unfolded Saturday morning. More than 2,500 volunteers painted the homes of low-income, elderly homeowners as part of the "Paint Your Heart Out, Tampa!" program, an event that has taken place for the past 14 years. The groups used 1,600 gallons of paint donated by Glidden, rollers and drop clothes from Home Depot and a whole lot of heart. Normally, painting a house can be a chore that makes the back sore and the arms tired. "It takes forever," said Pat Flanigan, 47, who has painted her own house. But painting a stranger's house, when you know it will look good, doesn't feel like work at all, she said. "We broke a little sweat, but that was a couple of hours ago," said Kristi Miller, 36, painting at a house in North Hyde Park. The groups, who came from companies, churches and social organizations, make the work a social event. Every house gets a supply of doughnuts and coffee, along with brushes and floor mats. "Gosh, it's so much fun," said Lenora Roberson, 30, Mayor Dick Greco's assistant, who was working with a team from City Hall on a home on 28th Avenue. "Want to go to my house?" asked Warren Bourgeois, a city official who works for the mayor. At a house on W North B Street, Daly Sutton was sitting on the back of a pickup truck, taking a break. White dots were sprinkled over his face and his T-shirt, which said, "Big Daddy." "I grew up on the rough side, and the Lord helped me," Sutton said. "So I have to help out." He especially likes to help the elderly, he said, because his grandfather raised him. "It's important, with all the corruption and the evil out there, to spread some goodness." Inside the shotgun house, 91-year-old Frankie Ray was leaning back in her sofa chair, talking about all the work she put into her home, where she raised a family and saw her husband pass away. In her living room were pictures of her six children and copies of the Bible. When she moved in 27 years ago, "it was a house," she said. "But we made it a home." She and her husband put on layer after layer of wallpaper, raked the front yard and tended to the garden, where collard greens, cabbage, and turnips still grow. Recently, though, when she returned home from church, she noticed how dirty the outside of her house had become. She told her son it need a fresh coat of paint. About noon Saturday, Ray opened her front door and poked her head outside to see the porch, freshly painted evergreen. "Wow!" she said. Minutes later, when Mayor Dick Greco arrived, she posed for a photograph outside with him and a crew of volunteers. "Where's the champagne!" she said, raising her arm in triumph. -- Times Staff Writer David Karp can be reached at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com.
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From the Times North of Tampa |
