Ruthi E. has worked as an English professor at Central Washington University for close to 40 years. The job brought her from her native Portland to Ellensburg, where she and her ex-husband bought a house that she jokingly refers to as a “hodgepodge of code violations.”
In her spare time, Ruthi sings in the choir of the Ellensburg Methodist Church, where she has been a member for 30 years. She also gives back through volunteer work at the church’s clothing bank, where they accept and organize donations in a free clothing store that the church runs. She also volunteers with Central Washington Justice for our Neighbors, an organization that serves the local immigrant population. When not giving back to her community, Ruthi enjoys reading and maintains a weekly dinner with friends every Wednesday night.
It was at one of these dinners that Ruthi’s friend mentioned Habitat SKKC’s repair program: “I have a friend who has her finger on the pulse of what’s going on in Ellensburg, and she told me about this program, and it sounded too good to be true. I’m so grateful to that friend that every time we meet on Wednesday night, I buy her dinner.”
Ruthi and her ex-husband bought their home, a fixer-upper, in 1990. The original house was built around 1886, and the previous owners kept adding to it in the ’20s and ’30s. She explains, “It was in bad shape, but my ex-husband had been a contractor, so he fixed it up considerably and then built an addition. It’s an interesting, rambling little mess.”
One of the features of her home in dire need of repair was the side porch, which was sagging and crumbling. “It looked absolutely horrible, and it was scuffed and squishy,” adds Ruthi.
The wooden part of the deck that leads to the concrete steps “sagged like the Dickens” because it had been walked on for so many years and it wasn’t built very well to begin with. Habitat SKKC’s Repair Team rebuilt the whole porch in a week, including putting in foundations for it. The work didn’t stop there: We replaced an outdated and unsafe wall heater, fixed live wires hanging down in the attic, and brought in an arborist to clear out branches from the yard.
“I can’t believe I got all this. That would have cost me a fortune. I couldn’t afford it in a million years,” Ruthi reflects with gratitude.
Ruthi is a grandmother and loves that her grandchildren live only a few blocks away. She refers to her eldest grandson Baxter as a “raccoon” because he is always scavenging and bringing items back to grandma’s house. “Every time he comes over, he wants to go to the Habitat Store,” she says. He has already laid claim to grandma’s porch, added a desk he found, and turned it into his workshop. Most recently, he built a potato cannon using a Pringles can.
She is happy to share the space with him, especially now that it’s safe for everyone to walk on. The newly repaired porch gives them renewed access to an important part of the house, one where Ruthi can enjoy some quiet time outside and Baxter can work on his latest engineering projects.
