Interview and photography by Skip Rowland

Editor’s note: The following is part of a continuing series in which we ask residents to describe their connection to the county.

TP: [We were] living in a small town in New Jersey, Cranford, about a 20 minute train ride to my office in Newark (I worked for Prudential Investments). It was a delightful little town but when you get out of your little town it gets very busy. [Our] four children [were] somewhat active and they [tended] to attract lots of other children; in New Jersey there just wasn’t enough room for us. Initially we settled here because of a house, Erin Hill, which was the best of both: it was in the Village, but it had 11 acres to it. I knew that would be enough room for the kids to play without bothering any of the neighbors. 

I commuted for 30 years; I commuted into Richmond 45 minutes each way, but I [traveled] for a living so my commute wasn’t just to Richmond: it was to Atlanta, New York, wherever.  I retired to get off the road, to be home more. I lived in Powhatan for almost 19 years and I was gone all the time. My wife was a stay-at-home mom and she knew everybody in town, so we basically traded places.  March 2008 she went to work full-time as a nurse while I retired.

[Last] October I went to visit Don Whitley who was the first part time Executive Director of the Powhatan Habitat. [While talking] he said, “By the way do you know anybody who wants my job because I’m going to retire,” and I said, “I do!” So as Lord works, He just presented that and I was lucky enough to win it. So I’ve been doing it since January this year.

As you know, Habitat builds housing for low-income families, families that make between 25 and 50 per cent of the median income of the county.  Habitat is not a giveaway program. It is a program where we sell houses to people that they help us build and we sell them with a 30 year mortgage at no interest and we are able to build them because of all the wonderful volunteers and donated materials at roughly half of what it would cost in the marketplace. 

We are blessed this is a wonderful giving community; we have 47 churches in this community; within those churches in and outside are hundreds of people who volunteer all the time so finding volunteers within Powhatan is actually reasonably easy. I think my biggest problem is making sure that everybody who does qualify knows about it and it does apply.
I would feel terrible if there is a very deserving family and they didn’t know this opportunity!

I have three sons and a daughter. It’s wonderful having them all around and closed by. Powhatan is just a wonderful place to grow up as a kid so they have very fond memories of Powhatan so they do like coming back and that’s probably why a couple of them never left. They just like being here like the Laurie and I do.

I’ve been blessed in that three years ago my parents moved here; they were in Maryland with one of my sisters and actually my parents moved here right around the corner from my house in the Village and my sister moved right next door to them so we have more family here now than we ever did. That’s the kind of place that Powhatan is; it’s such a wonderful place to live.

My wife and I don’t live in Erin Hill anymore, we moved to the other side of the Village, next to the cemetery; she has said that we were going to move one more time: across the street to the cemetery!
However, we have fallen in love with Scottsville…I would rather on Saturday work at Habitat than mow my lawn so by moving in to Scottsville I don’t have to do any of that stuff; I can do good deeds whenever I want. So, at some point we will probably move one more time, and then we’ll move into the cemetery.

I moved here because of a house; I live here now because of the people.