John Littlefield, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: The DeVries Family
Hey Gang, Johnny here from the Extreme team! This week we found ourselves in Minnesota with the DeVries family, now I truly believe this family and their community puts the heart in the heartland!
Now the players in my great story are Dirk the dad, Susan the mom and their three kids, April, Derik and Hanna.
Despite their physical limitations and an ancient farm house that has scene better days if not centuries, bus drivers Dirk and Susan have transported the kids of their community not just to and from school, but to a place of imagination, hope and ingenious ways of making music!
Now you might think Dirk is the hero of my story, he had lost an arm in a farming accident when he was young, but still continues to keep his house and his family together with the strength of his one remaining arm, not to mention he is the mechanic for the school bus! I don't know if you know anything about mechanics, but it's hard enough to change a spark plug let alone a transfer case with one arm, but Dirk doesn't see it as an inhibitor but as a challenge of perseverance everyday!
Susan DeVries suffers from Ventricular Tachycardia, which keeps her heart beating above 100 beats a minute. This arrhythmia may lead to ventricular fibrillation and sudden death and is becoming increasingly more life threatening. So basically she feels exhausted all the time. Let me break this down for you, normally we all wake from a restful night's sleep ready to face the day. But for Susan, she wakes with the feeling as if she just ran a marathon! She rises, feeds and helps prepare her family for the coming day, hops in the school bus, picks up the students, drives to school, teaches all day (music of all things) drives all the students home, and then goes home herself to prepare a meal for her own family, goes to bed to do it all over again the next day...I'm winded just typing all of that so I can only imagine what our hero must feel everyday of her life!
But Susan doesn't see it as a challenge or a burden. She finds it in herself to strive everyday selflessly providing for her family and her community! And with the help of her husband Dirk and her children she sees the fruits of her labors everyday in the faces of the students she teaches! Now I mentioned she teaches music, now as all of you know, when their are budget cuts at schools the first thing to go is the music department.... but not for Susan, no, her music class is part arts and crafts, part real instruments, and 100% dedication to learning, teaching, and inspiring each student with music!
When she first took over the music program, the school had very few instruments, so she used creativity and ingenuity to bring her own personal twist to the music program! With her own money she has bought used instruments, scoured garage sales, and literally made instruments out of soup cans, buckets, plastic pipe, string, you name it she can make music from it and more importantly she is teaching her students! The beautiful thing I think is, the music is actually secondary, the students may think there just going to the best music class ever, but they are also learning to recycle, to create something out of nothing and have fun doing it.
At home the DeVries family finds that their mothers' health is often hindered by the deterioration of their home. The roof is beyond repair, constantly leaking when it rains, which means a lot of rot and mold in the house, definitely not a healthy environment for anyone let alone someone in Susan's condition. Together with another local hero, Al Larsen, owner of Larsen Contracting, we are going to change that!
And that's why were here this week, not only to build the DeVries family a new home but more importantly to honor this silent selfless hero. This season is dedicated to just that! Thank you Extreme team and thank you DeVries family!
