Monday, August 10, 2015

Mr. A purchased his Mark Twain Neighborhood home 10 years ago so he could live next door to his mother to help her out with home maintenance and yard work.  But he fell on financial hard times when the job market declined a few years ago, and faced losing his home to tax auction this year.  Last week, PRTR assisted Mr. A in getting a few dollars together, updating his driver’s license, and obtaining other paperwork necessary to enter a payment agreement with the Collector of Revenue in order to save his home from the auction block.  “I love to work!  Never missed a day of work and never been fired from a job.  I used to detail cars,” said Mr. A.  So we found him some employment doing general labor.  Today, one of PRTR’s donors, Mr. Dave in Shaw, asked to hire Mr. A for “an odd job”, as he put it, cleaning up years worth of construction debris that had taken a toll on the interior of his work vehicle.  When Mr. A was finished, Mr. Dave barely recognized his truck.  Mr. Dave’s wife, Mrs. J, even “lifted her ban on traveling in it”!  A hot summer day turned into a pretty cool evening of great conversations and new connections across St. Louis neighborhoods, and Mr. Dave supplied Mr. A with a Black Lives Matter sign for his yard.