John and Lee Schmucker are pictured on the roof of a Proyecto Azteca home. The Schmucker family frames and roofs homes for colonia residents every year.

SAN JUAN, Feb. 8 - Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs steward their companies and stockholders into bankruptcy and reward themselves multimillion dollar bonuses.

In some cases they are bankrolled with tax-payers bailout money.

Financier Bernie Madoff moves from the penthouse to the jailhouse after swindling investors and retirees for over a billion dollars in phony investment schemes.

Enron executives create a façade of an enterprise, funded by artificially overvalued stock, bilk millions of dollars from stockholders and leaves a U.S. President sheepishly wondering why he had so generously praised its CEO, Kenneth Lay, before the two-by-fours break, the props come crashing down, and all that is left is the dusty field on which the illusion of a Fortune 500 Company had been built.

Greed is too often the keyword of the era, the building block of commerce, the driving force behind anything being done for anybody. Or so it would seem. There are heroes in novels, comic books, video games, movies and serials, people driven by nothing more than a desire to help their fellow man, to promote justice, and to defend the underdog against overwhelming odds.

But do they exist only in fiction, only in stories, only in your dreams? Maybe not.

Like modern-day heroes the Schmucker family of Lancaster, Pennsylvania travel to the Rio Grande Valley or South Florida every February at their own expense, in their own 4X4 F150 utility truck, and with their own tools to voluntarily assist the impoverished families of both areas in realizing the American dream of home ownership by building from the ground up the entire frame and roof of a Proyecto Azteca or Habitat for Humanity home.

The Schmucker are not carpenters or builders by trade, but entrepreneurs in the hotel and restaurant business in their native Pennsylvania, who since 1991 have been taking time out from their business to volunteer their time to Habitat for Humanity in both the Valley and Immokalee, Florida, another migrant farm worker community. “The reward for us is just in being able to help other people,” said Pauley Schmucker.

“We believe that we are very fortunate and believe that we should do something for those that are less fortunate,” his son Lee added.

“We are also happy to be part of the Texas sun in the wintertime,” laughed his brother John. “We do have a slightly ulterior motive.”

John’s wife, Kathy added: “We got involved in Habitat in 1991 as a sort of sabbatical (from the family business) and have been coming to the Valley not every year but about every third or fourth year.”

The Schmucker’s involvement in building homes for the needy began over 20 years ago with Pauley himself began building houses, spreading the enthusiasm to practically the entire Schmucker extended family, his six children and over thirty grandchildren. Approximately 15 Schmucker family members will be participating in homebuilding in the Rio Grande Valley this winter alone. The elder Schmucker has himself built hundreds of homes around the country for needy families.

The Pennsylvania family’s generosity is not limited to building roofs alone. Elma Schmucker, a former member of a rural Amish community in Lancaster County, presents colonia families with a huge hand-made patchwork quilt at the time they occupy their new volunteer-built home. “I always make it a surprise. They (the new homeowner family) aren’t expecting it at all. Sometimes the families even break down into tears,” says Alma. “It definitely gives you a good feeling.”

“Yes the feeling of bonding with a family is a wonderful thing,” said Kathy. “Even though we don’t speak Spanish and can’t understand every word said, a strong connection is definitely there.”

This reporter would have loved to stay longer at Proyecto Azteca and chatted further with the Schmuckers, this selfless family that gives so much of its time and energy. But they had to get back to work—sawing, fitting and nailing beams in place for yet another home for another needy family here in the Rio Grande Valley, while Elma continued her artistic and generous quilt crafting, a product of her Amish upbringing.

This reporter got tired just watching them. People like the Schmuckers show that the ideals of reaching out and lending a helping hand without expecting anything in return other than a sense of personal satisfaction and a day in the sweet sunshine of the Rio Grande Valley are not fantasies but realities as tangible as the calluses on their hands.

Write Bill Rovira

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