how a habitat home built lasting memories

By Wayne Casper
The week I spent back in March of 1992, working with my Sargento crew of about 15 fellow employees, was one of the fondest memories of my Sargento career.

From March 30 to April 3, the 16 of us worked with Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity to build what I believe were the first two Habitat houses in the state of Wisconsin. The two homes were near Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood. The eventual owners worked side by side with us on the homes. While I had no previous construction experience, I was taught how to frame windows with aluminum siding stock. After a little trial and error, I got the hang of it with satisfactory results. Apparently, my Habitat trainer found me trainable.

During the project I stayed at the old Astor hotel on Milwaukee’s East Side. I remember falling asleep was easy after eight hours of work each day at the Habitat sites.

Over the course of the five days that we worked on the two houses, we got involved in several facets of new home construction. I remember measuring boards that were called for (measure twice, cut once), helping to frame the house with board, hammer and nail, and doing a lot of running around delivering boards and stuff to various people on the site who knew a lot more than I did about what was going on. The Habitat crew leaders were very friendly and helpful, and after a few days of working with us, they figured out where our strengths and weaknesses were in the realm of home construction.

I excelled most at running materials to those who were most experienced — it wasn’t their first rodeo.

The camaraderie at the work site was outstanding. The Habitat leaders, my fellow Sargento employees, and the two homes’ prospective owners all meshed well together as they focused on a common purpose: Building new homes and creating the American Dream.

The interesting thing was that I thought I would have lost weight after five six- to eight-hour days at the Habitat job sites. I gained four pounds, thanks to plenty of snacks and meals on the build site and very nice meals at Milwaukee restaurants in the evening.

I only worked on one Habitat project for an awesome reason: Sargento rotated the experience among other employees on future build involvements so that more people got a chance to experience building a Habitat for Humanity House. It takes a great company like Sargento to get many of their employees involved in a worthwhile endeavor like this. For this and other reasons, I will always treasure my 12 years at Sargento.

All in all, this was an unforgettable experience and provided wonderful memories of working for the Habitat organization. I recommend this experience to everyone.

Habitat Lakeside would love construction volunteers! For more information, please contact Penny Rayfield, our volunteer services manager: [email protected]
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Wayne Casper is a retired executive vice president of sales, marketing, and new product development at Sargento. At the time of his Habitat experience, he was vice president of new product development.