Anne Glancey is a retired teacher who grew up in a New Jersey house that, over the years, ended up looking so run-down she faced $3,000-a-day fines from the city council. Anne didn’t have friends or family to turn to for help repainting the home and cutting the three-foot-high grass — until her kind neighbors stepped in to help.
Adam and Kristin Polhemus moved to the town five years ago, and tried to befriend and help Anne, who seemed isolated and very private.
“She had no relations with anyone in the neighborhood,” said Adam, “Until my wife and I moved in, no neighbors had a conversation with her. But every time we brought up repairs, she would change the subject.”
Adam and Kristin knew that Anne was struggling, but she was either too proud or too stubborn to ask for help outright.
So they secretly rounded up 25 friends, neighbors, and church members and, this past summer, spent every weekend working on Anne’s house — for free.
From landscaping, painting, and repairing the house, Adam estimates the work would have cost Anna as much as $15,000 to complete professionally.
But thanks to these selfless people, Anne no longer faces fines for the way her home looks. But the biggest change was seen in Anne herself, who, over the weeks, would come out to chat with the volunteers and serve homemade carrot cake and orange juice.
“To see the joy on our neighbor’s face, I think the biggest thing is Anne’s happiness and her kind of restored life,” says Adam, “Her outgoingness to other neighbors is based on her house being improved.”
And Anne herself is so thankful to the kind people of her community: “I appreciate their generosity,” she says, “They are good Samaritans, really wonderful and thoughtful. Not everyone would arise to the occasion and I am grateful for it.”