WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — The street was lined with flags, and the sound of cheers filled the air; neighbors stopped by to catch a glimpse of the moment. It wasn’t just another Saturday morning in Wesley Chapel. It was the day Marine Sgt. Christopher Lawrence and Army Sgt. Quincy Lopez received the keys to their forever home, thanks to Homes for Our Troops.
“This house is meant for me to be in forever,” Lawrence said. “One of the things Tamika didn’t say is we grew up in foster care. We didn’t have enough stability. We bounced around forever, and the Marine Corps bounc
from unit to unit. And I don’t want my children to grow up with that. And I feel like I’ve never unpacked and really moved in anywhere, but I plan to here.”
WATCH: ‘Welcome Home’: 2 wounded veterans receive keys to their forever homes in Wesley Chapel
For Lawrence, the date itself carried weight.
“I believe that God, the universe works with a purpose. And today, being September 6, and receiving this house, and everybody being here, it’s a day for celebration, but it was also one of the saddest days in my life. It was a day that I lost my crew, my team," he said.
Lawrence admitted he was reluctant at first.
“I don’t like accepting things. I’m humble. I don’t like all the theater and the attention. I don’t like it. But, you know, it’s worth it, especially bringing attention to a phenomenal organization like Homes for Our Troops.”
He explained how this will drastically change his life.
“After I got injured, they said you probably won’t be able to walk. And then they said, you absolutely won’t be able to run. And now I now I run every chance I get, and I’ll take the opportunity to walk anywhere too. When they and on a good day, yes, I can do everything. I could be around the house, I could drive, I could walk, I could climb stairs. But on a bad day, what am I? I am? Realistically, I’m not helping the family. I’m kind of taking the space.”
The celebration continued, moving over to Army Sgt. Quincy Lopez. He stood in front of his own new home, surrounded by supporters, and shared his journey.
On January 26, 2006, during his third deployment, Sergeant Lopez was serving as an Intelligence NCO with the 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad, Iraq, when his convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED). The blast resulted in severe injuries to his leg, ultimately leading to the below the knee amputation of his right leg.
“Matter of fact, it’s been a total of 25 surgeries, with the 25th surgery happening six weeks ago to my neck.”
He explained how unsafe his old home had been.
“I would have to roll my wheelchair up to the bathroom door, get up, use a walker to get to where the toilet is, and then use grab bars just to get down to the toilet. Those are multiple opportunities for me to fall into transition. And, trust me, I fell many, many times.”
Then he gestured toward his new home.
“What a home like this does here, and what Homes for Our Troops does with rebuilding families. They’re not just rebuilding families. You guys aren’t just rebuilding my family. You’re rebuilding this whole community.”
Much like Sgt. Lawrence, Sgt. Lopez says this new home is life-changing.
“This home is going to allow me to be a better veteran, a better warrior, a better father, a better community service member, a better coach, you know. So you’re not just giving families an opportunity to rebuild their lives. You’re giving families their brothers back, their sisters back, their mothers, their fathers, their uncles, their aunts. You’re giving families back a lot, and I can’t thank you all enough for what you’re doing.”
The emotion of the day was not lost on Tom Landwermeyer, president and CEO of Homes for Our Troops, who is also a veteran himself.
"Being a veteran myself, 33 years in the Army, one of the first things we were taught as a leader was take care of your troops. For me personally, this is just taking care of troops another way. Just continue to do it. But really, even though we’re a charity, we don’t see what we do, our mission as charity. We really see it as the moral obligation, the duty of our country to take care of these veterans and their families.”
He added, “All these veterans volunteer to serve. We haven’t had a draft since 1973, so they raised their right hand, volunteered, and went down range when it was their time to go. In the blink of an eye, their lives and their families' lives changed forever. So it’s our country’s responsibility to take care of these veterans and put them in homes that they can actually be independent in, have full access to the home, be a completely safe place for them to rehab and recover.”
The homes themselves are works of adaptation and care.
“So all of our homes have more than 40 major special adaptations designed into them to restore that freedom and independence to the veteran,” Landwermeyer explained. “In a normal home, the veterans that we serve have lost limbs. We have different levels of paralysis, blindness and severe burns, so these are the most severe injured that we had coming out of those wars.”
He described how a traditional home traps veterans.
“In a normal home, the doorways are smaller. The hallways are smaller. There’s stairs, there’s carpet. They can’t get to places. They’ll isolate themselves to one part of the home. They may have kids rooms upstairs that they can’t get to, or they have to drag themselves up to, and that’s not how they ought to live.”
Instead, Homes for Our Troops creates homes that restore dignity.
“They end up they sacrifice their freedom and independence because they need assistance. So it’s spouses and children and friends and family members that are their caregivers. They don’t want that. They’re not asking for these homes. All they want to do is live a normal life like the rest of us do. So they want to be able to come and go from their home. They want to be a valued contributor to their family, be a regular dad or spouse, just like the rest of us, and these homes with these adaptations allow them to do that.”
As the flag in front of each home was raised, voices rang out in song: “God bless America, my home sweet home.”
“This is just, you know, magnificent,” Lawrence said, watching his daughters race from room to room. “I can function here. That’s, I’m like, so happy to be able to actually be a member of the family all the time, not just when I’m having good days.”
Lopez echoed the sentiment as he toured his bathroom. “Now this is wheelchair accessible. I can roll in here. I don't risk falling. I can just transfer easily. I can’t wait. I can’t wait even to go to the bathroom. There’s no getting up anymore. There’s just rolling straight to where I gotta roll and rolling right back out. I can confirm it’s amazing.”
The homes are a fresh start, but also a reminder of sacrifice.
“Sometimes it just repaints things,” Lawrence said of the date’s new meaning. “This is a magnificent day.”
Homes for Our Troops builds 20 to 25 homes a year for the nation’s most severely injured post-9/11 veterans. Nearly 90 cents of every dollar donated goes directly to building homes. Volunteers are needed to support builds, and donations help keep the mission alive.
For more information or to get involved, click here.
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