Published: July 21, 2008 08:29 am            

Paying it forward

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

“Would you like to help the homeless?” asks 6-year-old Austyn Wynn.

He accepts a dollar from a charitable woman outside of Kroger, and stuffs it into a water jug serving as a collection box.

After just a few hours, the donations are growing. Nearly every shopper asked donates a few dollars or some spare change.

How can you ignore smiling 6- and 10-year-olds asking for donations?

Especially two children who have been homeless themselves.

In March 2007, an electrical fire destroyed the Wynns’ home on Bee Creek Road and everything in it. The family did not have insurance, and they shuffled among friends and families for more than a month until a kind soul donated a trailer (albeit, not one in the best of shape) for the family to live in.

It wasn’t long after when volunteers from Old Dominion Church in Virginia, working through local organization Friends for Families, built a new three-bedroom house for the Wynns.

Their generosity was not forgotten. Now, almost a year to the day that she received a new home, 10-year-old Taylor Wynn is “paying it forward.”

“Since I was homeless... and they built my house, I wanted to help them in some way, and this was the only way I could come up with,” Taylor said.

With her brother and grandmother, Taylor sat in front of Kroger on the Falls Highway in Corbin Friday taking donations for the church that changed her family’s lives.

The Wynns will be back at Kroger today (Saturday) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. collecting donations.

“She’s been talking about it, trying to figure out something to do since they built it (the house),” Mary Wynn said.

Taylor, who’s a Girl Scout, got the idea to set up at the grocery store after her troop had success there selling cookies. A bulletin board Taylor created showcased laminated articles from the Times-Tribune about the original house fire and Old Dominion’s rebuilt house a few months later. The Wynns also saved photos and well-wishes handwritten by the church volunteer team.

Friends for Families has had volunteer builders in town nearly every week this summer — 14 groups in all.

First Baptist Church in Cherryville, N.C., which helped finish the Wynn’s house last year, is coming on Saturday to work on a project. Old Dominion members were also back in Whitley County this week, working on four projects in Whitley County, including replacing a deck and several rotted windows at the Girl’s Ranch home for young women.

They also stopped by to see how the Wynns like their new place, which Taylor says is “awesome.”

“Taylor’s been trying to figure out for a year on how she can help Old Dominion, and I’m very proud of Taylor, and I’m proud of Mary for supporting her,” said Melany Hanrahan with Friends for Families. “I encouraged her 100 percent. If everybody in the United States would look at what has been done for them in the past and turn around and give, we wouldn’t be in the shape that we’re in.”

The idea of “paying it forward” is central to Friends for Families’ mission. Several people who have had their homes worked on have since volunteered with Friends for Families. A man and woman who had their house repaired last year recently came out to pour the foundation for another family’s project, Hanrahan said.

“That’s exactly what we’re building for. We want people to get involved with their neighborhood, their community,” she said, “to teach people to rely on each other.”

Hanrahan cited the Grimm Brothers tale “Stone Soup,” about a group of travelers who stop in a poor village where no one will share their food. The travelers put a stone in a pot of boiling water for their soup, but ask residents to chip in just a little bit to add “flavor” to the soup. In the end, the residents have shared during a time of scarcity and learned that they can all reap the benefits.

“You take a little from one person to the other and eventually you’ve got a lot,” she said. “We all do our part, that’s what it’s all about.”

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.