On August 5, 2010, after seven days of round-the-clock construction by hundreds of volunteers, ABC’s Extreme Makeover bus pulled away, and trisha urban saw her new home in Tilden Township for the first time.
Looking back on that moment, she says, “There was so much anticipation, and then when it happened, it went so quickly.”
Trisha was chosen by ABC for the makeover after her husband, Andy, died on the same day her daughter, Cora, was born. The couple had purchased a 300-year-old log home with the intention of renovating it, but after Andy’s death, Trisha was left with a crumbling house and a mountain of debt.
One of the things she remembers most clearly about the makeover experience was having five minutes to pack for Walt Disney World. “I was literally throwing clothes for myself and Cora into a suitcase,” she recalls. “I could hear the heavy equipment outside, and the producers were screaming at me, ‘You need to get out!’”
Demolition started even as she was driving away, with a volunteer rapidly taking down the fence in the yard. “My husband and I put in the posts by ourselves,” she says. “In a whole day, we might get four done if we were lucky, and there was this person just hammering them out.”
To this day, Trisha says, she sees people around town who helped with the makeover. “I’ll go to the store, and people will say, ‘I did the plumbing in your house.’” But she knows she will probably never meet all the volunteers who gave their time that week. “I’ve seen the behind-the-scenes video,” she says, “and it just blows my mind. I so wish I could have been here.”
The year since the build has gone by quickly, too. Cora, now 3 years old, talks up a storm and skitters through the house to play hide-and-seek, squealing, “Find me, find me.” Trisha says her daughter’s favorite part of the house is the play barn in her bedroom, the front of which was built by her father, Andy, before he died.
GIVING BACK
“I vowed to pay it forward when I got the new house,” Trisha says. “That’s what my focus has been this past year.”
She has spoken at various local organizations like Opportunity House; Bridge of Hope Berks County, dedicated to ending homelessness for women; and the Boy Scouts, where she talked about the importance of volunteerism.
Trisha’s fundraising efforts for charity kicked off with a series of house tours shortly after the Extreme Makeover episode aired in October 2010. “I scheduled back-to-back tours eight hours a day for two days,” she laughs. “I didn’t even allow for bathroom breaks or eating, so it was pretty intense.”
Visitors’ reaction to the house, she says, was that “the TV show didn’t do it justice, that you had to be here to actually see and appreciate it.” Many remaining parts of the old house weren’t highlighted in the show, like a wooden beam in the center of the living area that still shows its old red paint despite Trisha and Andy’s best efforts to strip it. “You can still see the various shades of paint that we never got off,” she says. “There’s so much of the old house in the new house, and you wouldn’t have known that unless you went on the tour.”
Trisha doesn’t know exactly how many people came through her house that weekend, but the tours were a huge success, earning about $9,000. The money was split between the two charities closest to her heart.
Part of the money went toward a Rotary project in which the Spring Township club, which Trisha belongs to, and the Reading club joined forces to build a well in a remote area of the Philippines.
“That was very significant,” Trisha explains, “because in my old house, I didn’t have clean water.”
The UV light in her well had gone out, and it was too old to be replaced. “I needed a whole new system,” she says, “and at the time I couldn’t afford it.” She describes how for two to three weeks, “by the kindness of strangers who brought gallons of water,” she was able to give Cora baths and make baby formula to feed her. She says of having clean water, “You don’t realize how significant that is until it hits you.”
RESTORING HOPE
The rest of the money raised from the house tours went to another important cause for Trisha: giving a similar makeover experience to others.
After the Extreme build, she teamed up with the Home Builders Association of Berks County, which was forming the Restoring Hope Foundation, a non-profit designed to continue the work of doing makeovers for deserving local families. Trisha says it’s her goal “to be a part of changing somebody else’s life significantly like people changed my life.”
In February of 2011, Trisha helped to surprise Steve and Chris Eisenhower of Shartlesville, recipients of the first Restoring Hope makeover. “It was even better being on the giving end,” she says.
Both the bedroom and bathroom of the Eisenhower home were not wheelchair accessible, so Steve, who has Multiple Sclerosis, was sleeping in the kitchen. Restoring Hope put a 15x20-foot addition on the home, including a new bedroom, handicap-accessible bathroom and wheelchair ramp. Just like for Trisha’s makeover, all time and materials for the project were donated.
Trisha’s fundraising efforts for the Restoring Hope Foundation are ongoing, and soon the board of directors will meet to choose the next makeover family.
MAKING PEOPLE HAPPY
“I think the biggest thing that hasn’t been told,” Trisha says of her life before the makeover, “is that it really was such a struggle, more than anyone could ever imagine.” When Andy died, Trisha was left not only with medical bills, but with property that was all in his name. “I had to buy the house back for more than we paid for it,” she says. “I lost it all: the cars, the house, everything. It was such an uphill battle.”
She says that time has not faded the memories of that experience. “I still remember it,” she says. “I still have those vivid dreams. But as horrible as those dreams are, it’s a good reminder of where I came from.”
She says of the Makeover build, “It’s given me a future, and I didn’t have one.” Now that future is becoming her focus.“I’m hoping I’m able to inspire other people that you can make a significant difference in somebody’s life,” Trisha says. “That’s something I learned from my husband.”
Andy, a psychotherapist, had many young clients who still keep in touch with Trisha. “During the funeral,” she recalls, “they all came up to me, and it was such a powerful, healing experience, having all those people, especially the adolescents, talk to me about what a difference he made in their lives.”
Trisha hopes that, like her charity work, those kids will go on to positively impact the lives of others. “It’s a chain reaction,” she says. “That’s what I hope to do.”
One young person whose life will certainly be changed is Cora. Trisha says that she has seen the Extreme Makeover episode, and Trisha has explained to her that “a lot of people have come together to help us and do good things for us.” Trisha says, “I think she understands that.”
Even when Cora plays with friends, Trisha says, “She’s got, and I’ve tried to instill in her, that good nature.” She asks, “Cora, what do we say about sharing?”
Smiling up at her mom, Cora chimes, “It makes people happy!”
WINDS OF CHANGE
Ed Woll, co-founder of Control Alt Energy in Auburn, Schuylkill County, was on a roof installing solar panels when his son Greg, a partner in the business, told him, “Dad, I donated a wind turbine.”
“At first, I thought he was joking,” Woll says. “Then I realized it was for real.”
As a dealer for Southwest Wind Power, the Wolls had been asked to participate in the Extreme Makeover build in Tilden Township. Even though Ed, his wife Annette, and their children Greg, Ashley, and Shawn, all of whom work in the business, had a family vacation planned that week, they agreed to install a wind turbine at Trisha Urban’s new house.
When Ed and Annette founded Control Alt Energy (“Helping you control alternative energy”) in 2006, while Greg and Ashley were serving in Iraq, their goal was to help reduce American dependence on foreign oil. “That was the main reason we decided to start the business,” Woll says.
Solar energy is affordable today, Woll explains, because the systems can be leased instead of bought outright. “The homeowner couldn’t even find the materials for the cost of the lease,” he says, “and at the end of 20 years, they own the system.”
In addition to installing American-made solar and wind systems, the company also helps customers to reduce their energy bills through conservation and maintenance.
At Urban’s house, they installed a TED (The Energy Detective). This handheld wireless device lets homeowners monitor their electricity use. “If you turn lights on in your house,” Woll says, “you can see in real time how many cents it’s costing.”
Control Alt Energy also installed a device to monitor each of the solar panels in the ground-mounted system outside Urban’s house. When he found that two panels weren’t functioning, Woll replaced them.
He says of the Extreme Makeover build, “I would do it again in a heartbeat because it was just such a neat experience to be involved in.”
The Wolls give to their community in another way as well. After surviving brain cancer twice, Ed, along with his family, started the Watts for Cancer program. For every watt of electricity generated by their customers’ alternative energy systems, Control Alt Energy donates five cents to the American Cancer Society and another five cents to Johns Hopkins for cancer research.
CONTROLALTENERGY.COM | 888-527-9467
BY DOROTHY LEHMAN HOERR | PHOTOS BY ANNELIESE GEHRIS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MCDONOUGH
