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WESLEY CHAPEL Fla. — An injured veteran is getting a brand-new home with the help from a nonprofit.
Homes for Our Troops is building a home in Wesley Chapel with special accommodations for an injured veteran who’s moving to Florida.
On Saturday, over a hundred volunteers were putting the finishing on the house, getting it ready for its first resident, Christopher Lawrence.
After watching the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, as a high schooler, Lawrence said he knew he wanted to join the U.S. Marine Corps. He enlisted in 2005 and was stationed at Camp Pendleton before being deployed to Iraq two years later.
“I wouldn’t recommend it for vacation. Iraq was hotter than this, wasn’t fun,” the veteran said.
He was part of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion in Iraq for about five months before he was severely injured.
“Doing combat patrols, and walking over a bridge, and they blew the bridge up underneath me, and I lost my leg,” Lawrence said.
He said everything was injured but his right arm. He eventually needed a wheelchair and said he had a hard time getting around his house. So, one of his friends recommended he reach out to the nonprofit Homes for Our Troops.
“What good am I just laying on the couch, not able to do anything, making my wife do everything?” he said.
Homes for Our Troops is now providing Lawrence and his family with a new home in Wesley Chapel. The house has specific modifications to meet the veteran’s needs.
Christopher Lawrence (far right) and his familly is moving into this brand new home free of charge. Homes for Our Troops provided the home to the family. (Spectrum News/Tyler O’Neill)
“This is the way to pay back the kind of sacrifices that they put up,” said Bob Samonte, IT Consultant for Homes for Our Troops.
150 volunteers came out Saturday morning to do the landscaping in the front and backyard of the house.
“It’s amazing to see the support from people that I don’t know in the community. You know, it makes me happy to be here,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence hopes his new home lets him be a functional member of his family, he said.
After all the volunteers left, the family got to see inside the home.
The nonprofit said it expects Lawrence and his family to be able to move in during early September.
Homes for Our Troops builds about 30 homes a year across the country, and since 2004, the nonprofit says it has built roughly 430 homes.
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Tyler O’Neill
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