ARLINGTON If 18-year-old Arlington High School student Jacob McAdams had one message for the community, it would be to keep on trying to do your best, dont be a quitter and dont give up.
What makes McAdams words more than just talk is the fact that hes volunteered his time and effort to help out his neighbors, and hes done so in spite of the fact that he suffers from a mental disability.
According to Kimberly Jantz, McAdams mother, her towering son has been diagnosed with a chromosomal defect that has left him with the mind of a 10-year-old boy, but that didnt stop him from enlisting his stepfather, Phillip, in a project to restore the bus shelter at the end of their block.
The bus shelter at the corner of 211th Place and 67th Drive is not owned by the city, county or school district, but instead simply sits on the property of homeowner Robert Hoover, who not only agreed to allow Phillip Jantz and Jacob McAdams to repair and repaint the eight-foot-tall, seven-foot-wide, 16-foot-long wooden structure, but also helped them reposition it so that bus drivers would be able to see it better from the street.
Phillip and Kimberly agreed, though, that while Phillip provided Jacob with close supervision, Jacob himself was responsible for most of the motivation and labor involved in the project, which actually began during the summer months. Kimberly attributed her sons inspiration to equal parts simple boredom and relatively keen observation.
As new houses have gone up on our block, he saw the scraps of wood that the construction workers were throwing out and I think got him interested, said Kimberly, who noted that Jacob had finished what was meant to be a long-term birdhouse-building project in a matter of hours.
Both Kimberly and Phillip credited Rodda Paint in Smokey Point with cutting the costs of Jacobs project, with Phillip noting that we spent maybe $2.50 on the whole thing, since the store manager of the Smokey Point Rodda Paint handed off gallons of primer to us, once Kimberly explained to him that the primer was desperately needed for a community project. The house builders likewise let Jacob haul away as much scrap wood as he could load into his red wagon, and the Jantz family had plenty of purple paint, the color of which was okay with Hoover.
Time proved to be a scarcer resource since the Jantz family had only moved into the neighborhood in March and maintained a hectic schedule of school, work and participation in their church. As such, Jacob and his stepfather could only spare occasional hours on weekends and, much more infrequently, at the end of long weekdays, but even this slow schedule was interrupted, when Phillip and Kimberly were married and celebrated their honeymoon in August.
Still, Jacob and Phillip managed not only to replace the panels in the walls and ceiling that had been rotting away, and to cover the entire outside of the structure with a bright wine-colored coat of paint to protect its wood from the weather, but also to install a new bench inside of the shelter so that the dirty, worn-out couch that had served as its seating could be tossed into the trash. They had to space two-dozen hours of work over nearly four months of living, but the Jantz family believes that the results have been worth their efforts.
Jake cut most of the wood himself with a skill-saw, which is a huge thing for him, even with us watching him, said Kimberly Jantz. Normally, I wouldnt even let him touch our hedge-trimmers. It just goes to show that pitching in for your community is not that hard to do, because all you have to do is make the effort.
So many people drove past that old bus shelter and saw how bad it looked, said Phillip Jantz. When we were out there fixing it, some of them even told us, I sure am glad to see somebodys doing something about that. If people dont ask about these things, they wont know what they can do.
I like seeing the smiles on peoples faces, and the happiness in their hearts, when I can help them, said Jacob McAdams. If they need help doing things, they should just give me a call, and I can show them.