RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — For Mary Jo Hatchett, her work with Habitat for Humanity in Madison and Clark Counties hits a little closer to home.
“Fun fact, my dad built with President Carter in Thailand,” she boasted while talking about the 39th president’s impact on the organization.
“President Carter is who made habitat a big organization,” Hatchett stated.
The Habitat for Humanity office in Richmond spent Thursday celebrating Carter’s life and legacy on the day his funeral took place in Washington, D.C.
In 1997, Carter came to Richmond to help build seven homes as part of his well-known “Blitz Build.”
‘Just right around the corner several people still live in the homes President Carter helped build,” Hatchett explained.
Many of those homes are now paid off. Other will soon be, as the homeowners who will live there qualified for low interest loans thanks to Habitat for Humanity’s program.
Carter’s legacy here will be as strong as the foundations he helped pour to support those home, as Mary Jo proudly unveiled the organizations next local mission.
“We are getting ready to build seven homes in the next little bit,” she said of the groundbreaking on those sites, which she hopes will happen late next month, or early in March.
The work here will further cement the final message the organization sent to the former president. It reads: “Thanks, Mr. President, we’ll take it from here.”
Hatchett was asked what her father had to say about Carter from their time working together building homes in Thailand.
“He said he was fantastic and was right in there (working on homes) with everybody,” Hatchett said.
