Full-time volunteer enjoys helping others find hope in the wreckage

Jackson native and Habitat volunteer Mary Louise Shaw spent Monday morning at the Operation Home Delivery build site in Jackson operating a table saw. A petite figure among the taller and heftier volunteers, Shaw bent over the saw with determination, working quickly and deftly. She was a picture of strength: not simply physical strength but strength of the heart.

Shaw has been volunteering with Habitat’s Metro Jackson affiliate for more than 12 years. Since retiring three years ago, she has had even more time to dedicate as a volunteer, including becoming a regular “Saturday volunteer” for house builds.

Taking a break from her duties at the table saw, Shaw took time to talk about her volunteer work. Her clothes and cheeks were dusted with saw dust, but she didn’t brush them away. Instead, she jumped right into a discussion about her love for volunteering with Habitat.

“I really enjoy the construction. The painting and caulking I can leave,” she said.

You could call it an acquired taste for house building. Shaw recalled the first time she volunteered at a Habitat house build. It was a typical swelling-hot August day in Mississippi, and when she showed up, the team was putting on the roof. “It was OK in the morning because we were working under the shade of a big tree. Of course, by the afternoon, the tree had moved,” Shaw said, grinning. She admitted that she left the build site shortly after lunch time that day. But she came back to build again, and she has been a committed volunteer ever since.

In fact, Shaw could qualify as a full-time volunteer. She also works with her church, Covenant Presbyterian, on various volunteer projects. Currently her church, along with two other church partners, have furnished materials and labor for an eight-week house build that will soon be home to a low-income family in the church’s community.

She plans to volunteer another day at the Jackson build for Operation Home Delivery before joining her church on a volunteer mission to the Gulf Coast, where they will set to work sifting through the debris from hurricane-ravaged houses. With a few of these volunteer trips already behind her, Shaw now knows that their efforts to help families search for anything valuable and salvageable are not futile.

“My first impression of this work was that we would never find anything,” Shaw said. But last week’s experience proved her wrong. Digging through sand and heaps of rubble at a homeowner’s request, Shaw and her team pulled away brick from the pile. To their amazement, beneath that brick, sparkling in the sand, was the homeowner’s diamond wedding band—a tangible sign of hope in the aftermath of this disaster, not unlike the Habitat homes being built.