CHEERS TO DESTROY: "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" Team Leader Ty Pennington leads hundreds of volunteers and the Kartchner Homes building crew toward the soon-to-be-demolished Pauni home. / Photo by Rebekah Bradway

By Kathryn Kemp

October 17, 2006 | A chill in the early morning air was broken by the sounds of cheering and clapping as a large crowd of volunteers marched down 400 East toward the site of a new home being built by Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for the Pauni family.

Tuesday morning the group of volunteers, led by the show's host Ty Pennington, and followed by five backhoes, marched down the road in anticipation and preparation for the demolition of the Pauni family's old home. Volunteers from USU and the community wore blue T-shirts with the show's logo on them and white hard hats, and members of the team from Kartchner Homes, who is building the new house, wore orange coats and orange hard hats as they marched.

The march is a traditional scene in the TV show's episodes, showing the volunteers who are willing and ready to work hard to help achieve the goal. In fact, they filmed the march of the volunteers four times, in order to get it just right, and to get it at different angles. In all of those repeats though, the volunteers never lost their enthusiasm and neither did the cast and crew of the show, or the crowd of spectators along the roadway.

Kelsie Felix, Lacy Nelson and Jeanette Nelson, residents of Logan who were among the volunteers, said they enjoyed participating in the march, and all of the filming. They laughed every time they heard a crew member yell, "Back to one!" meaning they had to go back to where they started and do it again.

As they stood in the crowd waiting for the camera crews to be ready, Pennington would run around the crowd, cheering and getting them excited. He didn't really talk much, they said, it was mostly just cheering and running around.

Cody Creech and Alan Larsen, two USU students were also in the crowd. They both said they thought it was funny how excited everyone got about seeing Pennington.

"It was interesting because everyone wanted to be in the front and on the sides where Ty was," Larsen said. He said most of the volunteers who will be working won't get to meet the cast members. Creech doesn't care though, because he said, ?"I'm here for the construction."

Even amid the excitement of a television show and stars in the area, that's really what most of the volunteers are here for.

Creech and Larsen got the opportunity to serve because they work for Shane Falslev Flooring, the company who will be putting in the flooring on Thursday night. Scheduled to start at 9 p.m. and go until 5 a.m., 30-40 people will assist in putting the flooring in the house.

"All we'll do is the floor," Creech said. That is the main reason they were signed up by their boss as volunteers. Larsen would like to do more if he could though.

"If I didn't have class, I'd probably help more," he said.

Felix and the two Nelsons, who are sisters, got involved through different means, but they are all equally excited to serve. Felix said the best part of volunteering is "just making the family happy." The girls said they will help in any way that they are needed. Today they moved boxes and food, and they plan on sticking around all week and working where they're needed. Jeanette Nelson says she will enjoy the volunteer work because she is happy, "just to know you're a part of making another family's life better."

When the filming of the march was complete, the volunteers crowded in front of the house, circling around Pennington and Troy Kartchner, president of Kartchner Homes, for the final event before the demolition began. Kartchner gave a speech to the crowd of volunteers who cheered as he spoke to them of the plans and thanked them for their help. No one except the group of volunteers who marched could hear him, but later on, Kartchner explained that he was mostly thanking all the volunteers and the crews for their willingness to help.

He told the volunteers how the producer of the show called him and asked if he would be willing to build the home.

"Without hesitation I answered that we would," he said. But the show wouldn't let him say yes immediately. They explained that they would be handing everything over for free, so he needed to find out if the sub-contractors and other workers would be willing to do that, so he had to check with them first, which he did.

"Without hesitation they volunteered -- hundreds of them," he said. So Kartchner thanked all of those people as well as the community volunteers for their willingness to serve. He also thanked Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for the service they are providing.

"They do so much good across the community. None of this would be possible in our community without what they do." These people came for the simple purpose of serving a family who lost a father and a wife who lost a companion, he said. They came to take care of that family.

"Everyone working on this are the heroes of this job," he said.

DESIGNERS WAIT FOR DESTRUCTION: Members of the "Extreme Makeover" design team wait in front of the Pauni home before its destruction. / Photo by Rebekah Bradway

MS
MS