“Look at God.” Those were the words that Bea Taylor spoke when she was told that she had been nominated by members of the community for a new roof through Ammons Roofing.
With tears in their eyes, representatives of Ammons Roofing rejoiced with Bea who was overwhelmed with gratitude, as was her daughter who was on the phone with her mother when she was given the wonderful news on her doorstep.
Daniel Rivera, the Sales Manager of Ammons Roofing, partnered up with Dustin White from Builders FirstSource located in Amarillo and Shelby Huff of the Salvation Army Pampa Branch, to figure out a way to bless a member of the Pampa community.
“We came up with the idea of giving away a free roof. Dustin and I coordinated to get materials donated from Colby Moore at GAF and once we got approval with the boss and his blessing, we had Ms. Shelby Huff get on our Facebook page to get people to nominate who they thought deserved to get a free roof and GrayCares helped do that,” Rivera said.
GrayCares is a local non-profit organization that helps citizens 65 and older to live independently by providing home-based services that include minor home repairs and simple home maintenance.
Dee Randall is the director for GrayCares in Pampa and happily nominated Bea Taylor, who has volunteered in many projects within the community for several years.
“Bea is a long-time volunteer for all of Pampa and always helps people and always involved in doing good,” said Dan Morrison, who also nominated Bea.
Rivera described the experience of surprising Bea at her door like those Publisher’s Clearing House commercials and her reaction to the news, as well as everyone involved, were just like what you would see on TV: one of utter surprise.
“She cried and we cried. There wasn’t a dry eye,” Kerry Ammons said.
Everyone involved with the giveaway were unaware of just how bad the condition the roof was in and upon doing a walkthrough, the pots sitting on floors to catch water coming from the holes in the roof called for urgency.
“Judging by the state of the roof, it wasn’t going to be long before it collapsed,” White said. “She really needed this.”
Not only was Bea told that she was getting a brand new roof, she even got to pick out the color she wanted.
“When I came to her to let her look at color samples to pick from, she made me cry again,” Rivera laughed. “She thought we were just going to put on a roof and didn’t know we were going to let her pick the color.”
At this moment, several crew members are hard at work replacing Bea’s roof as well as installing new gutters, materials being donated from 4R Gutter Services, owned by Randy Tice.
Everyone involved in this gesture of humility and generosity treated Bea and her family and all of the volunteers and workers to a cookout on Tuesday with Shelby and Leslie Huddle, the office manager of Ammons Roofing serving up burgers and hot dogs: the event closely resembling a family get-together.
But with a community this close-knit, it would be hard to see it as anything else.
