Volunteers build house for homeless Vietnam veteran sleeping in car since 2020

Yahoo

10-03-2025

In January 2024, Steve Layman read an article in The Herald-Times about a Bloomington woman's attempt to help a 76-year-old Marine Corps veteran who had been living in his car since his house burned down.
It prompted him to find out more.
Could he help get the man into a house, 'as he should be?'
April Wittebort responded after seeing Stewart Eaton's plea on Facebook for help clearing debris and weeds from the westside property where his house once stood. The county had filed legal action against him requiring the lot be cleaned up.
Could anyone lend a hand, devote an hour, to help him out?
'I would be extremely grateful,' his post said.
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After dropping her kids off at school one morning, Wittebort drove to Heatherwood Lane and found Eaton's 2019 Ford Fusion parked in the driveway that once led to his house.
He was asleep behind the wheel. She knocked on the window, waking him up. She asked one question: 'How can I help you?'
Mike Kelly, retired from the U.S. Air Force, saw Eaton's Facebook post as a chance to assist a fellow veteran. He met up with Wittebort and Ryan Mader, another person who wanted to pitch in. The three picked up more than a ton of debris from the property and Kelly hauled it away.
Before long, he joined the volunteer construction crew, despite having no experience.
'I have a truck. I'm retired. I have the time," he said last year as he prepared to fill the bed of his truck one last time with debris from Eaton's property.
John Duell was at the dining room table in his Greene County home reading the newspaper when he saw the story about Wittebort's plan to raise $5,000 through GoFundMe to buy a used FEMA trailer for Eaton to put on his property.
'That made me laugh pretty hard because I knew that would be an impossibility in Bloomington,' said Duell, who has been involved in building nearly 200 Habitat for Humanity homes. He had been wanting to build a house for a veteran, and right here was an opportunity. He could make this happen.
Then, he said, 'a bold and forceful voice' issued a command. Duell is a man of faith who believes in divine direction.
'Even with my poor hearing, it rang out. 'Build the house.''
He contacted Layman, whom he knew from Habitat builds. It wasn't long before Layman, Duell, Kelly Wittebort and Mader formulated a plan to build the house. 'That's when I met Mike and Ryan and April. That's when we agreed we could do this."
Eaton used his savings and Social Security income to provide about $100,000 to purchase supplies and cover the cost of non-volunteer labor. A lot was donated: architectural plans, blueprints, land clearing, windows, appliances, a wooden hutch and a twin bed with a thick mattress.
For a long time, Eaton slept on a reserved metal-frame cot with a mat at Wheeler Mission. Sometimes he would splurge on a motel room.
Duell served as the construction crew leader, directing the small group of core volunteers and others from Habitat for Humanity who helped with big projects like setting the roof trusses. 'Nothing stopped us from working five or six days a week with whatever volunteers were available,' Kelly said.
Duell, he said, never missed a day.
Kelly said toward the end, he woke up every morning and said to himself, ''Finish what you started, finish what you started.' I have never built a home before, so I was taking it one day at a time.'
The 1,050-square-foot house has two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a laundry room, a screened front porch, a small back porch and a carport. The Veteran's Administration paid for a long ramp leading to the front door and brought a full-sized flag to a March 1 open house to fly outside.
At the open house, volunteers talked about what it meant for this diverse group of strangers to work together to provide a house for Eaton. Duell and Kelly, grown men who made sure this project happened, became emotional and were hardly able to speak.
Both believe God had a hand in bringing together the people who built the home. 'This house is truly a godsend for Stewart,' Kelly said.
That night, after the volunteers and guests had departed, Eaton locked the front and back doors and spent his first night sleeping in his bed.
In his new house.
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at [e-mail] or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Strangers build homeless Marine Corp vet living in car a new house