This here is about heroes too. But not in the usual way.

Two days ago I worked on a house being built for a disabled veteran. It is a lofty type of thing – you will see it in the TV news next Saturday. A big time home builder gathered contractors to donate all materials and labor to produce a very nice house which will be officially handed over to the new owner on Saturday. Yes, wide corridors for the wheelchair included.

You could call all the people involved in this work “angels”. But these people do not look like angels. These angels where weary Mexican laborers that in 8 hours stopped only for a 30 min. lunch, a war veteran that came to help in an old truck with all his belongings and his pregnant fiance because they have no place to live, the small start-up business owner who after 5 days on his day job spend his Saturday working on his knees and the next day hurt all over, the hectic and stressed managers of the project, a guy from Eastern Europe that had 4 hours of sleep the day before, the quiet guys that did last moment handyman work and had little to say because for $10/hr you do not have much to say.

These were the angels some of which you will see dressed up and smiling on TV next Saturday.

This is how a miracle happens – with small, ordinary people without wings that you can see. Dirty clothes, noisy equipment, mud, sweat, torn shoes and shirts, all kinds of dust.

To me all that had little to do with war, right, or wrong. It had to do with love.

* Update: About 3 years later the sergeant’s demons got to him.  He took his own life.