by Jim Kenyon

Chapters:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Series Home

Valley News Home

A Delicate Balance: Pride and Need

Barry Seaver, a single father with three kids, considers turning to a religious group for help with his housing woes. Meanwhile, Kate Wood spends her day off looking for help in a Greenfield, Mass., courthouse. And for a Norwich waitress, every day is pay day.

Chapter Three

Barry Seaver didn't want to do it, not at first.

He knew the Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity's house-building program wasn't strictly charity. If the nonprofit organization selected him, he would have to put hundreds of hours of sweat into building the home. And there would be a $70,000, interest-free mortgage to pay over 20 years.

Still, Barry couldn't bring himself to make the phone call to Habitat. A friend, Michael, had made the first call, alerting the organization to his situation. They seemed interested, Michael had said. But Barry had too much pride.

Habitat helps the so-called working poor -- the people who exist between welfare and middle-class comfort. And they account for a larger chunk of the Upper Valley population than people driving around in Suburbans with "Think Globally, Act Locally" bumper stickers might think.

Very few of those eligible for Habitat's help consider themselves poor. After all, they've got jobs, cars and sometimes even health insurance for their kids. But with a shortage of affordable housing in the Upper Valley, they find themselves constantly swimming upstream.

Until a couple of years ago, Barry could never have pictured himself qualifying for Habitat's house-building program.

He had always done things on his own.

He was 17 and still at Lebanon High School when he moved out of his grandmother's house and into an apartment.

As a teenager, he was so in love that he took a sharp needle, dabbed it into a bottle of ink, and went to work on his forearm. In rough, homemade letters, the tattoo read:

B.S. Luv K.W.

In the summer of 1977, the high school sweethearts were married and five years later their first son was born.

Barry started an auto repair business, and his wife later went to college. They bought his grandmother's house in West Lebanon. They had a boat, a camper and three kids.

Life was good.

Then, in the early '90s the Upper Valley's economy went into a nose dive. He owed the bank nearly $10,000 on a line of credit set up for the business. He began to regret buying those three motorcycles and four guitars worth $1,000 apiece, not to mention the $10,000 worth of weightlifting equipment. (Although anyone would have to admit, glancing at his wash-board stomach and rippling biceps that he's certainly put the equipment to good use over the years.)

Those same years took their toll on Barry's marriage. The Aug. 15, 1997, divorce certificate notes irreconcilable differences and gives them joint custody of the children.

Since the divorce, his ex-wife has remarried and still lives in the area. Meanwhile, Barry, 44, is living in a two-bedroom Lebanon apartment with his two teenage sons and daughter, who spends every other week with her mother.

He works as a counselor for Next Step Peer Support Center, a nonprofit mental health organization in Lebanon, making $21,800 a year. Just three years ago, when he was a mechanic for a West Lebanon car dealer, he earned that much in six months.

After the divorce, however, he quit the car business. Barry decided he wanted to try to fix people rather than SUVs.

FINALLY, BARRY MAKES THE CALL.

The woman who runs the Habitat office sounds genuinely pleased to hear that he's interested in applying for the house the group is planning to build in West Lebanon. She tells him that Habitat has already received 50 inquiries. One family will be picked.

He has no idea what to expect. Come to think of it, all he really knows about Habitat for Humanity is that former president Jimmy Carter is somehow involved. Fortunately, the woman is more interested in hearing about his situation than testing his Habitat knowledge.

"What kind of work do you do?" she asks.

"I'm in social services," Barry replies.

He has cleared the first hurdle. Habitat builds homes only for working people. And there are strict income guidelines. With three kids, Barry must earn at least $21,050 a year and not more than $34,600.

"Your annual income?" the woman asks.

Barry hesitates for a moment. It is not a figure he is particularly proud of.

"Almost $22,000."

He doesn't mention the few extra bucks he earns as an Elvis impersonator at weekend gigs. No need to scare off the Habitat people this early, he thinks.

The Elvis act started one night about 10 years ago when he and his music-playing buddies got together for one of their regular jam sessions. Barry was goofing around with his guitar, pretending to be Elvis, when a friend's wife walked through the door.

The next thing he knew, she had signed him up to be the closing act at the Mascoma Valley Regional High School annual variety show. He had never sung in public before, but by the end of the night women were asking him for Elvis autographs.

It wasn't long before he owned three sequined costumes and began coloring his hair jet black.

IN HANOVER, Lou's Restaurant and Bakery is an institution.

On weekends, the line for a table can spill onto Main Street. During the week customers are waiting at the door when the restaurant opens at 6 a.m. In earlier days, before middle-aged men began watching their cholesterol levels, Lou's was where Hanover and Dartmouth powerbrokers started each business day.

"A tradition since 1947," states the front of Ginny Macomber's white Lou's T-shirt. In her arms, Ginny juggles four plates of eggs and pancakes as she hip-checks her way through the kitchen's swinging door.

"My deuce is ready," she tells the hostess as they pass between two rows of booths. The hostess knows that Ginny is talking about the corner table for two, and she can now seat the couple waiting in line by the cash register.

"Here's your Mickey Mouse pancake," says Ginny, setting the plate down in front of the young boy having breakfast with his parents and older sister.

The boy stares at Ginny's long and manicured fingernails painted fire-engine red. The cosmetic company's name for the nail polish is "I'm not a waitress."

Waitressing is the only work the 36-year-old single mom has ever known. "After high school I got into waitressing and just couldn't get out," she says after leaving the little boy's table. "You get used to having that money. Every day you get your tips, so there's always cash in your pocket."

Because the law allows restaurants to pay waitresses half of the minimum wage, tips are Ginny's lifeblood. If she doesn't work, she doesn't get paid. As for sick days and vacations, they are luxuries she can rarely afford.

At Lou's, a waitress can earn $100 a day or more, depending on when she works. "If you want to make the big money you have to work weekends," says Lou's owner Toby Fried.

Ginny works every Saturday and Sunday. These prime shifts come at a price, however. Every Friday after work, Ginny comes home to pack her 8-year-old daughter Briana's clothes into a small, pink suitcase. The third-grader alternates spending weekends in western Massachusetts with her father -- who Ginny lived with for 10 years but never married -- and in Lebanon with Ginny's aunt.

Mother and daughter have been doing this for so long they really don't think about their weekends apart. Ginny says quality, not quantity, is what matters.

At her aunt's house in Lebanon, Ginny kisses Briana good-bye. "See you Sunday," she says.

THE CIRCULAR SAW EMITS A HIGH-PITCHED WHINE, spitting out sawdust as the blade chews through a sheet of half-inch plywood. On the roof, hammers pound steel nails, the sound echoing constantly through the West Lebanon neighborhood.

The job's contractor, Alan Compare, stands on a portion of the roof covered by plywood, a carpenter's apron tied around his waist, pleasure on his face. In the early stages of house building, noise is good.

"We're starting to make progress," he says. "A few more days like this and we'll be fine."

Standing below with the circular saw, Barry Seaver hollers to the men on the roof.

"Another 8-footer?"

"OK, we're ready," Alan replies.

Barry and his 15-year-old son, Ben, pull a sheet of plywood from the stack in what someday will be their front yard, but is mostly dirt now.

"This still doesn't seem real," says Barry. "I never thought I'd own a house again."

Barry and Ben steady the sheet of plywood on two saw horses. "Which bedroom do you want?" Barry asks his son.

Ben replies with teenage indifference. "I don't care."

Barry releases the saw's safety switch and presses the finger trigger. He bears down on the plywood with one hand, gripping the saw with the other. Spraying sawdust on his shirt, the blade slices through the wood.

IDEALLY BUILDING A HOUSE IS LIKE RUNNING A MARATHON. The goal is to make slow, steady progress. This project, however, has turned into a sprint against Mother Nature.

The foundation for the three-bedroom ranch on Route 10 did not get poured until mid-October. Ordinarily, with builders laboring all week, that would leave enough time to get the house buttoned up before winter. But this house is being built by volunteers, who are available only on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays.

It is now the final Saturday of October, and the whirling flurries are a reminder of the need to work quickly. The roof still needs to be finished, the vinyl siding tacked on and the windows installed before the first serious snow.

"We'll make it," Compare says confidently.

He motions to the eight men, including Barry's 18-year-old son, Lucas, on the roof's staging. This Saturday, the volunteers are top-notch. It seems all of them have picked up a hammer before, something that can't always be said of many of the well-meaning volunteers who show up on Habitat's job sites.

Asked where the volunteer carpenters come from, Compare says, "The Lord sends them."

Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity, which draws support from numerous area churches, has built 12 homes in the past 12 years. The international religious organization was founded in 1976 on the belief that as "Christians we should build simple, decent housing for poor people."

The three-bedroom ranch near the Hanover-Lebanon border on Route 10 is the first joint building project between Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity and Dartmouth College's Habitat chapter. Together, they have raised $70,000 in private contributions to pay for the half-acre lot and building materials.

Barry was selected from a dozen applicants -- Upper Valley working-class families earning between $16,850 and $44,450 a year, depending on the number of children they have.

Under Habitat rules, Barry, his family, and friends must put 400 hours of "sweat equity" into the project. When the house is finished, Barry's monthly mortgage payment will be less than what he pays to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Lebanon.

The second-floor apartment is so small that Barry's two sons, Ben and Lucas, sleep in the living room. Their 11-year-old sister, Jessica, has her own room, just off the kitchen.

The apartment is less congested now because Lucas, a freshman on academic scholarship at Vermont Technical College in Randolph, is home only on weekends. Ben lives full-time with Barry while Jessica splits her time between the Lebanon apartment and her mother's house.

Barry's bedroom is near the end of the hallway. The silver, sequined Elvis Presley jumpsuit hanging from the door makes it hard to miss.

At 56 Bank St., at least, Elvis lives.

IT IS NEARLY NOON, but Main Street in Greenfield, Mass., is still awash in the glow of car headlights. A raw, November rain falls from the blackened sky.

The Franklin County Courthouse, a massive, aging brick building, occupies a spot at the end of Main Street.

Kate Wood ignores the courthouse's front entrance. She's been here enough in the last two years to know that the two double doors are always locked. All visitors must enter through the basement door in the back.

Just inside the courthouse, a line has formed behind the metal detector. "Empty your pockets," the police officer says, "all car keys, loose change and cellular phones."

Kate rummages through the pockets of her fleece jacket, a McDonald's golden arches logo on the front. Her mother, Robin, is behind her. They have driven 80 miles this morning from the Fireside Inn, their West Lebanon home for the last month.

They take the stairs to the Family Court Division, which handles divorce, child support and child custody cases. Lawyers and clients, many of whom have not met since their previous court appearances, huddle in the hallway.

Kate, 24, sits down on an empty wooden bench. She stares at mud-splattered sneakers, unable to stifle a yawn. Her 11-hour shift at McDonald's didn't end until nearly midnight. If not for her mother's urging, Kate wouldn't have come this morning. She would have given up the fight to get her 3-year-old daughter Olivia's father to regularly pay child support by now.

The legal wrangling has dragged on for two years -- almost as long as Kate and Anatoly Matlis were together.

They had met through an early version of an Internet chat room. She was a freshman at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and he was attending Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After months of talking by phone and e-mail, Kate and Anatoly finally met face-to-face in the fall of '94.

One day, the phone rang in Kate's dormitory.

"Hi! Want a visitor?"

"Anatoly?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing here?"

They went out to dinner that night -- the start of a long distance relationship until Kate, struggling as a computer science major, dropped out of Smith halfway through her second year. She eventually moved to Baltimore to join Anatoly. One day, as they strolled the city streets together, Anatoly bought her a silver ring from an outdoor vendor.

Anatoly's parents did not know they were living together, Kate says. (Matlis and his attorneys declined several requests to be interviewed for this series.)

Like many relationships between college-aged adults this one eventually soured. In May 1996, Anatoly returned home to his parents in Marblehead, Mass., and Kate headed to Alaska where her mother was working at a hospital.

When she left for the summer, Kate did not know she was pregnant. She called Anatoly from Alaska to tell him.

After getting off the phone that night, she walked alone to the ocean's edge. She removed Anatoly's silver ring from her finger and tossed it in the surf.

On Jan. 23, 1997 in Ketchikan, Alaska, Olivia Hope Wood was born. This time, Kate did not call Anatoly. As far as she was concerned, he would never know he had a daughter.

But eight months later, after returning to Massachusetts, Olivia came down with a serious infection. In the hospital emergency room, Kate was asked if her baby was covered by health insurance.

No, Kate answered. She was handed a state financial aid application. The form asked for the name of Olivia's father.

Before her daughter could sign up for Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the poor, the state wanted to know if her father had the ability to pay.

The state, the hospital told Kate, would contact him. Anatoly, through his lawyer, sought a medical test to determine whether he was Olivia's father.

NEARLY THREE YEARS LATER, Kate's file inside the Greenfield, Mass., courthouse is an inch thick. The medical test indicated that Anatoly was the father of her baby. A copy of Anatoly's financial statements shows that as a software engineer he earned $51,494 in 1998 and $32,446 in 1999, the year he started graduate school.

The court ordered him to pay $200 a week in child support and granted him visitation rights. In June 1999, the court agreed to suspend the child support payments while Anatoly earned his master's degree in business administration. Last summer, the court ordered Anatoly to resume paying $100 a week. The meter would continue to run on the other $100 a week, the court said, but he could make the payments when he was back working full-time.

But it has been months since Kate last received a check.

On this dreary, November day in the hallway of the Greenfield courthouse, Robin mentally adds up how much Anatoly owes in child support.

"It's at least $3,000," she says. "Hopefully, we'll get it today. We can't get an apartment without that money."

Kate gets up from the wooden bench, retreating from her mother and the subject of apartments.

A few days earlier, Kate had looked at an apartment in Lebanon for $750 a month. With her and her younger sister both bringing home about $300 a week from McDonald's, they could afford the apartment.

But in order to move in, they would need nearly $2,000 in cash to cover the first month's rent, security deposit and utility hook-up fees.

The child support check would cover it.

Before leaving for court that morning, Kate called the landlord to say she would take the apartment, but needed a few more days to get the cash together.

After seeing her daughter hang up the phone, Robin asked, "what did she say?"

"It's been rented."

INSIDE THE COURTHOUSE, Kate stares blankly at the bulletin board in the hallway. Robin appears from around the corner, breaking her daughter's trance. She motions in the direction of the courtroom.

"Come on, Kate. Your case is next."

With this information as background, staff writer Jim Kenyon began visiting neighborhoods, motels and campgrounds in search of families with a story to tell. The focus narrowed to single-parent families, because they seemed to have the most to juggle: work schedules and demands at home.

In the end, four families stood out.

For 10 months, Kenyon and three Valley News photographers chronicled the lives of these four Upper Valley families. They went to work and school with them; they spent holidays with them, and for dozens of hours, they interviewed them. All of this was done with their permission.

Many quotes are taken from the reporter's notes. When the reporter was not present, conversations were reconstructed with the help of one or more of the people involved. The Valley News thanks the families and others who appear in this eight-part series for their cooperation.

Kerrie Ramsey
A 35-year-old respiratory therapist with three boys who finds a house to rent in Quechee after spending much of the summer and fall at a Hartford campground. Her 17-year-old son, Matt, watches his younger brothers, Chris and Sam, while she works the overnight shift at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

Kate Wood
A 24-year-old single mother training to be a shift manager at McDonald's in West Lebanon. She lives at the same Hartford campground as Kerrie Ramsey. Living with Kate is her 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, her mother, Robin, and 20-year-old sister, Margrette. After the campground closes for the winter, the family moves to a West Lebanon hotel.

Barry Seaver
A single father who rents a two-bedroom Lebanon apartment for himself and his three children, Lucas, Ben and Jessica. Barry, 44, is a peer counselor and moonlights as an Elvis impersonator.

Ginny Macomber
A 36-year-old waitress at Lou's Restaurant in Hanover. She is a single mother with an 8-year-old daughter, Briana, living in Norwich.