LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Steve Drayton and his husband Stephen moved into a quiet Lexington neighborhood four years ago and immediately noticed something.
"Our neighbor's home was completely covered by vegetation to the point that you couldn't even tell that the house was there," says Steve. "We never saw any visitors, and we became concerned over her health or just the living condition of the house."
It turns out their neighbor was an elderly woman who was extremely hard of hearing and couldn't hear their multiple attempts to connect with her. Once they got her permission, they joined others in the neighborhood to begin clearing her yard, but they found a bigger project than they had ever imagined.
"The first thing to do was to clear away 10 years of vegetation," Steve recalls. "We got rid of three to four thousand pounds of overgrowth."
"Once that was removed, you could see some of the damage that was in the house, and it was a bigger project than just removing vegetation," Stephen Drayton adds. "The vegetation had been rubbing on the roof. The windows had been rotted from all the moisture. The gutters had been sheared off by the overgrowth."
But the Steves and their neighbors were undaunted.
"We had little kids, pulling weeds and planting flowers with their moms. We had adults bringing chainsaws and weed-whackers, getting dirty, and just helping keep a neighbor in her home", says Steve.
They kept working, collecting and spending about $5,000 on their own and even convincing All-Around Roofing of Lexington to do a little philanthropy.
"(She calls and) says, 'We're going to put a new roof on your neighbor's house.' And I was dancing, I was dancing," Steve recalls. "It was like an $18,000 donation because they also had to take down all the base wood. It was so rotten, one of the roofers actually fell through."
I asked Steve if he ever thought his retirement project would be fixing a neighbor's house for charity. "No!" he laughs. "But I'm glad it was because she's a pip. She still drives herself to Cats games at Rupp Arena all by herself. She's as pure blue as you can be in Kentucky."
And after those games, she returns to a safe and secure home.
"She's snug as a bug in a rug going forward, so that makes me happy. That's what we should do – we should take care of our neighbors."
