Labor of Love continues to bless others
By Nathan Straus News Reporter

Completed ramp with Carrol Young, Al Allen, Ms Moore, Gary Miller, Roy Talbot, project manager and Tom Barnes.

An organization with a mind for community service, Labor of Love is a volunteer group designed to provide free home repair to the handicapped, indigent elderly, single mothers and grandmothers raising grandchildren. Labor of Love works in Henderson County and is a United Way Agency.

Roy Talbot, former president of the group, said Labor of Love was started over 20 years ago.

"It was started by the First Christian Church of Athens in 1986," Talbot said.

The first job the group undertook was for Habitat for Humanity.

"It brought people a lot closer," Talbot said. "They saw there was no Habitat for Humanity in East Texas at the time, so they filled the gap."

The group was joined by other churches within a year and a half, and Labor of Love achieved its 501c designation in 1989.

This designation, the same as the Boy Scouts of America, marks Labor of Love as an official charitable organization; money donated to it may be written off for tax purposes.

Labor of Love performs home repair activities such as painting, wheelchair ramp construction, front step repair, roof repair and other various handyman tasks.

Talbot said Labor of Love has a relaxed recruitment standard.

"We recruit from men's groups in churches. These are people who once you explain it to them, they know how to do the job," Talbot said.

Volunteers for the organization have trained by performing various "honey-does"

around their own houses, Roy Talbot also said.

However, the group does hire skilled tradesmen for complete reroofing and other complex tasks.

The charity does most of its work on weekdays as most, if not all of, the over 80 members are retired men. In 2007 they performed work for 214 families at a pace of nearly one family every weekday.

During some weekends the group works with the Boy Scouts or the 4H clubs in the area on painting jobs.

According to Talbot, the organization is still a "well kept secret ".

"It's unfortunate that many have never heard of us," Talbot said.