Not many people can say a former president helped build their home. But 10 homeowners on Benning Road in Southeast D.C. can, and it’s why the death of former President Jimmy Carter is hitting extra hard there this week.
The 10 homes built along the 4900 block of Benning Road — not far from the Maryland border — were built in 1992 by Habitat for Humanity. Many of those who earned those homes more than 30 years ago still live in them today.
“I learned to do insulation. Did yard work,” said Alisa Williams-Ford, who still lives in the home she helped build. “I did everything from watering the grass, just banging the nail.”
Williams-Ford was facing tough times, having recently separated from her partner and not really having a home to call her own. She was working two part-time jobs and also volunteering with HFH in the hopes of someday qualifying for a home she and her kids could call their own. It happened sooner than she expected.
“He (Carter) noticed me working so hard. … He said, ‘Get her a house.’ That was it,” she said. “And it was done by time I came in the office the next day. They were like, ‘Well, which house do you want? These last two?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t understand.'”
“I had no clue. I had absolutely no clue,” she added.
She said the former president simply declared “‘that’s hers,’ and that was it.”
Williams-Ford said that’s a story she doesn’t often share, but “when it comes to this person that we’re talking about, it was worth sharing a piece of that part of my heart.”
Next door, Almeada Allen said she spent more time working with former first lady Rosalynn Carter, though she remembered Jimmy climbing up on the roof and doing some work for a brief spell too.
“My house was built by all females,” Allen said. “But he did have a hand in it.”
She said she remembered him for his charity and helping “out a lot of people that really needed it.”
At the other end of the block, Curlie Gibson now lives in the home that he and his mother helped build with Carter.
“This house brings back a lot of memories, from cookouts to painting the house when we first got here. Helped build the walls, put in the foundation,” Gibson said.
“I was excited just to be sitting beside a president. And you didn’t have to worry about no Secret Services checking you,” he added with a laugh.
Everyone on the block described Carter, his friends and aides as easy to talk with and very sincere. And they all said the homes that were built in 1992 still hold up very well.
In fact, even some of the chain-link fences that were installed at the time the homes were built are still standing.
“It still blows my mind,” Williams-Ford said. “I still have the Bible. I still have the little, teeny rocking chair — my daughter was 2 — that they made.”
“He knew what he was doing. He knew more than I did,” Gibson said. “Stuff doesn’t last forever, so you’ve got to replace a little bit of things, but it’s holding up. Every time somebody walks past, ‘Is them houses still standing up?’ I say, ‘Yeah, they still holding up, holding them more than some new houses.'”
Williams-Ford admitted life has been stressful lately, even before finding out about Carter’s death. Initially, she was reluctant to open up and offer much to anyone. By the end of the conversation with WTOP, she was nearly in tears — still touched by the impact the Carters had on her and her family more than 30 years ago.
“What he’s done for others is absolutely wonderful,” she said. “To feel like you’re a part of that … he didn’t make you feel you was less than, he made you feel that you was worthy. And that’s the thing that I will always remember about him as a person and as a president. He stuck with those values. Absolutely love, nothing but love for him and his wife and his family.”
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