New friends replace Columbia woman’s roof

Martha Thompson collects rainwater in pots and pans and a trash can inside her Booker Washington Heights house.

Well, she used to, anyway.

How could a 78-year-old woman on a fixed income expect to replace her roof, even though the city was demanding she fix up her property? She couldn’t.

But a couple of dozen able-bodied, kind-hearted neighbors and one-time strangers could and did. And now Thompson doesn’t have to fret about rainy weather.

Thompson’s good Samaritans came to her aid after a community meeting about two months ago. Residents of north Columbia neighborhoods had met with some Republican Party representatives from around the region to voice their frustrations over broken promises and ignored needs.

“I talked about the Democrats and I talked about the Republicans, and I was saying they really weren’t doing anything for us,” Thompson said. “I told them we get out to vote, and they weren’t coming back into the neighborhoods doing anything for us.”

“She was letting us have it,” said the Rev. Leon Winn, pastor of Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church and vice chairman of the Sumter County Republican Party. He ran and lost in the 2014 Republican primary to represent South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives. “The Republican Party has to get themselves involved more in the black community, and that’s what we’re doing.”

At the suggestion of Jim Ulmer, the Orangeburg County Republican Party chairman who also heard Thompson’s pleas at the meeting, a team organized to collect supplies and donations to fix Thompson’s roof.

With the material resources taken care of, finding laborers was the easy part.

Brothers James and Anthony Sanders, who live in Booker Washington Heights, work tirelessly to clean up and do kind work around the neighborhood. They rounded up a crew of some two dozen volunteers, including about a half-dozen neighborhood teens, to work for free on Thompson’s roof on Friday and Saturday.

“I’m ready to get on everybody around here because they’re not doing what we’re supposed to do,” James Sanders said. He expressed frustration about his feeling that his and other north Columbia neighborhoods are being ignored by city leaders. “We’re going to prove to (the city) that we can do the work. All we need is them to bring the money so we can get the work done in our community and make it livable, make it comfortable, have good neighbors.”

Sanders is concerned with caring for the elderly in his community, such as Thompson, who can’t do for themselves. But he also works to provide positive opportunities for the youth, too, who don’t have easy access to features such as parks, libraries and recreation centers that are available to other young people in the city.

Caesar Nieto, an 18-year-old who will graduate from C.A. Johnson High School this spring, often helps out around the neighborhood with tasks such as picking up trash, mowing lawns and raking leaves. He lives down the street from Thompson and was glad to spend his Saturday morning on her roof, he said.

“It gives me a great feeling to be able to help someone who can’t help themselves,” said Nieto, who has aspirations of becoming a physician’s assistant and coming back to his community to work at the James E. Clyburn Community Health Center. “There’s a sense of unity. It brings us all together.”

While James Sanders begged for elected officials to pay attention to and put resources toward improving neighborhoods like his own, it was clear Saturday that Thompson and Booker Washington Heights had gotten the attention of some neighbors who cared to help.

Winn and Ulmer, even though they don’t live in the community, consider themselves neighbors and friends of Thompson and of Booker Washington Heights.

“Who is my neighbor? It’s not just the person who lives next door,” Ulmer said. “Your neighbor is whoever you see who’s in need that you can help. And if you have it in your power to help someone, help them.”

This story was originally published March 21, 2015 at 7:58 PM with the headline "New friends replace Columbia woman’s roof."