Building homes, bridges in New Jersey

By Patrick Markey

ATLANTIC CITY — They call themselves the Dirty Dozen. But to Eugene Walker, they are simply a blessing.

A short drive from Atlantic City on what was an empty New Jersey lot, stands Walker’s new home, a three-bedroom house with pale blue slatted walls and a bare front porch.

Inside, a skeleton of wooden frames had yet to become the home’s interior walls. But Walker, a 42-year-old single father, could already imagine himself living there.

"I don’t know how to start telling you I how feel about this. I had no space and now I have this. It’s been a real blessing for me," he said as his two young sons played football nearby.

"They came to my job and told me that I had been selected for the house. It was a grown man crying. I wanted it so bad," he said.

The Dirty Dozen work crew who put Walker’s house together are no ordinary construction team: The 12 young people from both sides of the Irish border traveled 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to build a house for a man they had never met.

"It’s been good to help someone out," said Rory Branagan, a chirpy 18-year-old from Mayobridge in County Newry.

"We get on like a family here. We even have arguments now," Branagan said of his Dirty Dozen teammates.

The New Jersey house is the fruit of a joint operation between Project Children, which brings young people from different traditions in Northern Ireland and the border counties to America for a summer, and another non-for-profit group, Habitat for Humanity, which helps provide low-income housing for disadvantaged families.

It has been a productive union. Celebrating their 25th anniversary, Project Children has already helped build 10 houses, in Washington, Jacksonville, Montana and Texas, since the organization began collaborating with Habitat in 1993.

"We supply the workforce. They get the building site. It works well because there are no politics," said Denis Mulcahy, the New York Police Department detective who set up Project Children in the 1970s. "And the people we put these kids up with have a good understanding of what is going on in Northern Ireland."

Project Children also brings Northern Irish children to America for summer visits and arranges for young professionals to join internships in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

But for the group’s project with Habitat for Humanity, trainees from centers such as Newry’s Clanrye Employment and Training Center and The Dundalk partnership, learn practical building site skills.

Starting from scratch, the Irish group takes the house through every stage of construction; from laying the foundations to brick work to roofing and putting the final touches to the interior walls. The New Jersey house was nearing completion in three months.

"These kids have to be in some kind of training center in some of the trades. They get three months over here working at it and then they are back into the training center," Mulcahy said.

"Every one of the 130 kids we’ve brought over has a job, which is great. It’s a selling point, it’s something different and they can get hired," he said.

But if it helps needy Americans and provides the trainees new skills, the program also teaches a few lessons in teamwork no matter who is hammering in the nails.

As Northern Ireland moves toward a more peaceful future, the Project Children and Habitat for Humanity operation is proving a leading example of successful cross-border exchange.

The 12 trainees are all 18 or older and unemployed. But they come from diverse backgrounds. Young women from Dundalk, south of the border, mix mortar with Protestant bricklayers from Kilkeel in the North; Catholics plastering walls with Protestants who live just a few miles away in County Newry.

Cautious at first, the group tackled their differences as any other team, through hard work and liberal doses of humor about the cultural gulf between Protestant and Catholic.

"They said, ‘We’ll sing our songs for you if you sing you’re songs for us.’ It’s a lot of joking about," said Laura Byrne, from Dundalk.

Arriving for her first day preparation for the trip to America, 22-year-old Michelle Cooper from Dundalk harbored concerns about the reactions of her teammates from North of the border.

"It’s been a real experience. The fact that we got on so well. There are no differences. We didn’t know how the Protestants we’re going to react toward us, but everyone got on," she said.

"People said we’d all be fighting," Cooper said. "But it’s been eight weeks and we’re still getting on."

Neville Matthews, a 25-year-old Protestant from Newry agreed: "I missed my friends at home, but we’re all best of friends here."

For the organizers, too, it’s been an experience in watching the group grow together. Gerry Campbell of the Dundalk Partnership said the trainees had not only learned new skills, but have grown in confidence from learning to look after themselves in what was for most their first trip abroad.

Sharon Essl, a Project Children representative for South Jersey, recalled a trip to an Irish Fleadh in Philadelphia. When bands began to play traditional Irish rebel songs, the group started looking at each other, concerned about how each in the group would react to this intrusive reminder of home. The answer was simple. The group got up and left together, Essl said.

"I felt they had all learned a lot from each other," she said.