A Time for Rebuilding

They swapped their business suits for work duds and traded client lists for claw hammers.

Thirty volunteers, gathered at a dusty North Long Beach lot, hitching at their jeans and squinting in the sun.

They came to build.

Most of them were Southern California employees of Merrill Lynch who had agreed to help Habitat for Humanity build three houses. It was part of a nationwide effort by the company to help the organization that seeks to provide homes for needy families.

The firm made that commitment Sept. 10, agreeing to contribute $1 million to Habitat and provide volunteers to wield hammers. The next day the company lost three employees in the attacks on the World Trade Center and was forced to abandon its world financial headquarters, which were housed across the street from the fallen towers.

So after Sept. 11, “we wondered if they would go through with it,” said Caroline Brady-Sinco, a Habitat spokeswoman.

Indeed they did. The $1-million donation would stand and, a few weeks after the attacks, Merrill Lynch volunteers assembled in North Long Beach.

They came in a trickle at first, in tentative groups of twos and threes, searching for familiar faces.

By 2 p.m., their white-collar cars lined the blue-collar block. They included men and women, mostly financial brokers, advisors and planners, many who that day would hammer and saw for the first time.

Another coast’s shattered city, one that seems closer to us all now, is never far from them.

Many of their lives, in fact, revolve around the rhythms of New York’s financial markets as much as anything else. They started at 2 because that was 5 in New York, after the closing bell.

But most volunteered before Sept. 11, and most took pains to separate this from that.

“If Sept. 11 didn’t happen, I’d still be here,” said Mac Lowry, standing in front of the frame of two-by-fours rising from the foundation of one of three three-bedroom, two-bath homes to be built at the site.

After huddling for a brief safety meeting, Lowry and the other greenhorn construction workers fished hard hats from a 30-gallon trash can and work gloves from a 5-gallon bucket.

Minutes later, nail bags dangling from their waists, they felt their way up ladders and into the splintery framework.

Financial advisor Dina Forhat clambered out over empty space to nail supporting blocks between quivering roof trusses.

Mary Huang stood unsteadily near a group laying plywood roof sheets.

Huang, a Merrill Lynch associate accustomed to the predictability and surety of numbers, made a quiet admission.

“I’m afraid of heights.”

Still, she volunteered for the roof.

“I want to do something positive,” she said. “I want to do something different.”

Soon Huang had learned to lean into the slope of the roof for balance and was nailing blocks of her own. Forhat ditched the gloves, reaching for pieces of lumber with her bare hands.

“They just get in the way,” she said.

Merrill Lynch, BP’s Arco division and a group called Hollywood for Habitat each picked up the estimated $100,000 tab for one house.

“Life has to go on, and we have to continue to support the local community where we do business,” said Robert Lizano, a nail-banging franchise consultant for Arco.

The homes will go to everyday families named Torres and Berry. Cynthia Berry, an insulin-dependent diabetic, dreams of the day when she and her daughter, Samantha, 9, will have a home to call their own. For Francisco and Maria Torres, an extra bedroom will mean a good night’s sleep for their son Jorge, 9, who shares the family’s one bedroom with his severely autistic brother, Jose, 11.

Both families will devote at least 250 hours of their time to help build their homes, working with people such as Bob Johnson, a retired electrical engineer who since 1998 has helped wire Habitat homes as many as four days a week.

“To me, it’s a very important program because it’s a hand up,” Johnson said.

The shadows grew long on Gardenia Street, and the chatter quieted, 30 volunteers absorbed in their 30 different tasks.

They were drawn by 30 different reasons, to channel despair and anguish, to learn something new, to simply help someone.

Two houses are nearly finished, and work on the third will begin in early December.

There was something defiant, something nearly poetic, about raising these houses from the dust, erecting walls and roofs in a world newly reminded that buildings cannot promise shelter or refuge.

Another firm, Aon Risk Services, lost 200 employees Sept. 11. Despite the loss, the firm had dozens of volunteers at work within days on a previously scheduled, 26-home Habitat for Humanity project in Wilmington. That project was unveiled Saturday.

“We felt like it was the right thing to do, for the company, and for our employees,” said Tim Thalman, an Aon spokesman.

Understanding, perhaps, that it is not the buildings that matter, but the building.

Habitat for Humanity can be reached at (562) 427-4663 or on the Web at https://www.habitatlb.org.