05/20/2009 2:00 PM -
To many, it seems like Habitat for Humanity has been around forever in Bryan-College Station. But actually, its roots can be traced back to a meeting that took place in a Bryan living room 20 years ago.
Kandy Rose was a longtime Bryan city council member who served in 80's, 90's, and 2000. But it was before she was even on the council when Rose was first exposed to the growing problem of local residents living in substandard housing. As chance would have it, at the time she was also reading a book by President Jimmy Carter, a gift from her husband Peter. In it, Carter talked enthusiastically about a relatively new organization he was involved with called Habitat for Humanity.
In 1989, Rose put two and two together. "I called a couple of my neighbors and about four other friends, I think there were about six or seven of us, and we gathered in our living room there in the Oaks. I ran the video tape that had been sent by the Habitat Office and it was amazing the response of our friends and neighbors."
Rose says once the fuse was lit, the Habitat movement began. "It was sort of one of those things that took on a life of its own. People became very enamored with the idea and thus, the Habitat for Humanity effort was born."
Despite early support for a Habitat in BCS, getting it from the "idea" stage to actual brick and mortar wasn't without its challenges. "We had several people who were very enthusiastic about it," says Rose. "But it took probably two years to be able to get the individuals in the community convinced that we weren't just going to make a big promise and then walk away from them."
But Rose says once the community began seeing walls go up, so did its confidence in Habitat. "It probably didn't really begin to take off until after we had built those first one or two houses and the word started getting out 'Hey, you know this is for real. This is actually going to happen.'"
After seeing her idea grow through the 90's, and serving several terms on the Bryan city council, Kandy and Pete Rose moved away from Bryan-College Station to Bozeman, Montana. She continues to keep up with Habitat's accomplishments, but admits at that first meeting in her living room in 1989, she never dreamed it would become this successful. "At the time, I didn't. Hopefully, at that time, I had enough vision to see what the impact might want to be," she says. "But to be able to think that in 20 years this organization has achieved that much and done that much good in the community is so incredibly rewarding."
