Wednesday, June 25, 2008

‘Extreme Makeover’ works magic upcounty

A family of 15 is getting new digs near Poolesville

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Gazette file photo
Felicia Jackson (center, in Cowboys shirt) is surrounded by her four children, along with 10 nieces and nephews she has been caring for since her sister died of cancer in 2004. Also pictured in this 2004 photo is a family friend (center front).
A family of 15 living in a Gaithersburg hotel awoke Sunday to news that ABC’s ‘‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” was planning to demolish a small home near Poolesville and in its place build them a new house.

The 1,000-square feet home on Jerusalem Church Terrace was demolished on Monday and a new 5,000-square feet house will be constructed this week. It will be ready for the family to move in by Sunday.

The family’s story and the project will air as the two-part premiere for the show’s sixth season in the fall, according to the ABC television network.

ABC chose to build the home for single mother Felicia Jackson, who is raising her four children and her late-sister’s 10 children, because of her ‘‘amazing story of family, hardships and survival,” according to a statement from the network and Classic Homes of Maryland, the company building the home. The children range in age from 4 to 18.

Jackson, who grew up in foster care and was separated from her sister who also was a foster child, several years ago embarked on a search for her sister. Jackson finally located and developed a strong bond with her sister, who died of cancer in August 2004. Jackson adopted her 10 nieces and nephews, according to a Gazette story published in December 2004.

‘‘She kept on saying she wanted her kids together,” Jackson, then 34, said in the article. ‘‘She just begged me to keep them together and to take care of them the way she would have taken care of them.”

At the time, Eric Kuhn, of Gaithersburg, a Kingsview Middle School teacher who taught some of the kids before they moved from Germantown to Rockville, coordinated efforts to help the family.

Kuhn, now a teacher at Lakelands Park Middle School, and his wife, Cindy, a teacher at Beall Elementary School, have become good friends with Jackson and the family. He nominated Jackson for the ABC show after he learned of her story, he said Monday.

Jackson, who was not a single-parent when she took in her 10 nieces and nephews, used to work fulltime as a collections officer at the county’s correctional facility in Boyds, Kuhn said. But the demands of 14 children forced her to take a part time job, and she now works as a security guard at a mall, and can’t afford or find permanent housing. The Jackson family has been living in a hotel since December. She purchased the home, which had been foreclosed, with a loan from the county, but hasn’t been able to make the needed renovations. Kuhn was trying to find volunteers to renovate the house so that Jackson could keep the kids together.

‘‘Many times in the last three, four years, she’s been faced with breaking them up [in the foster care system],” Kuhn said.

The Jackson family is on vacation in Walt Disney World in Florida during the construction.

‘‘These kids are one in a million,” Jackson told The Gazette in 2004. ‘‘If I had to do it all over again, even though I know there are rough spots, I’d do it all over again.”

The home

On Monday, crews demolished the two-story home, built in 1950 and located at 19505 Jerusalem Church Terrace, near Poolesville.

By Tuesday morning, the first floor of the house was nearly complete, said Amita Jain, vice president of Classic Homes, which is based in Rockville.

She said ABC contacted them May 22.

‘‘When we first heard about it didn’t think it was possible to build a home in four days that usually takes six months to build,” she said Tuesday. The home is ‘‘one of the largest” of Classic Homes’ designs.

‘‘This is one of the biggest homes that ‘Extreme Makeover’ has done,” Jain said.

About 700 community volunteers and 200 to 300 construction crew volunteers are involved with the project, she said.

‘‘This kind of work really brings together an entire community and almost an entire state,” Jain said.

The Jackson family will move into their new home on Sunday. Until then, crews will work around the clock.

‘‘Have you ever been so tired but the adrenaline is rushing so much, but you don’t want to stop? That’s exactly how it feels,” Jain said. ‘‘Our feet are tired, sweat is dripping down our face, but we don’t want to go home.”

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