After 58 Years in Her Murfreesboro Home, Pauline Is Getting a New Roof

Pauline wakes up happy. Not because every day is easy at 98, and not because life ever handed her much for free, but because somewhere along the way she decided that gratitude was a choice she could make every morning. “I wake up every morning happy,” she says. “I might be a little sleepy, but I’m happy. Happy to be alive. Happy to be up.” She has lived in the same Murfreesboro house for 58 years. She raised her boys there, buried her mother from there, hosted her dearest friends there, and watched the neighborhood change around her while she stayed rooted in place. This summer she will turn 99. And this season, for the first time in 21 years, she is getting a new roof over all of it, free of charge, through a nonprofit called Books of John. This is her story, and it is the kind of story that reminds us why we do what we do.

A Lincoln County Girl

Pauline was born on July 21, 1927, in a small community called Boonshill in Lincoln County, Tennessee, the oldest of seven children. Her childhood was happy until it wasn’t. When she was in her second year of high school, her father suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak. He lived five more years and passed away a month before his fiftieth birthday, leaving her mother to raise seven children, including newborn twins, on her own. Pauline had to leave school to help. So did her brother, who took over the farm work. They were teenagers carrying the weight of adults, and Pauline watched her mother carry the heaviest load of all without ever breaking. “She was one of the strongest women I have ever known,” Pauline says of her mother, who would go on to live to 95 in her own home. Years later, when Pauline found herself widowed and raising children alone, that example became her compass. “I knew I could do it,” she says. “If she did it, I could do it, because she taught me so much.”

Marriage, the Oil Fields, and a Hard Goodbye

At 20, Pauline married Robert Burgess, a young man from Marshall County. The two of them set off on a life that took them far from home. Robert worked the oil fields, and for eight and a half years they followed the work to Odessa, Texas, to Lovington, New Mexico, to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and on into Alabama. They had two sons, Marsh and Donald. Eventually they came back to Tennessee, where Robert went to auto diesel college in Nashville and the family settled near Lewisburg and later Petersburg. For about four years they ran a dairy farm, and Pauline remembers those days as some of the hardest of her life, with a son in high school rising before dawn to milk, a brand new baby in the house, and a husband at the barn from morning to night. Then Robert got sick. He was diagnosed with leukemia and lived only eight and a half months. He passed away at 40 years old. Pauline was 40 too. She had an 18 year old, a 4 year old, and a future she had not planned for.

Putting Down Roots in Murfreesboro

When her oldest son Marsh started college in Murfreesboro, the family decided to follow him. Marsh and a local family looked through the newspaper, found a few houses, and brought Pauline up on a Saturday to see them. The very first house she walked into had a fenced backyard where little Donald could run the way he had on the farm. She never looked at the other two. They bought the house that day in 1967 and moved in on Thanksgiving. She has been there ever since. She still smiles telling the story of how Donald, just a little boy then, asked her what she loved about it. “It goes with the flow,” she told him. “Anyway you go through it or in and out of it, you have another door to go out.” Fifty eight years later, it is still home. “I have loved living in Murfreesboro,” she says. “It has always been an easy place for me to get to know people.” And get to know people she did. Pauline worked in the cafeteria at Reeves Rogers school for 22 years, where the women she worked beside became some of her closest friends. “We felt like a family,” she says. She found community at church too, attending University Heights Church of Christ and later Cason Lane, and she built a circle of widow friends who traveled together, gathered often, and looked out for one another. One of those friends, Mary Mullett, still drives down from Nashville to visit every few weeks. She remembers a trip to Vermont in October, more than 20 years ago, as one of the most beautiful of her life. When friends called and asked if she wanted to go somewhere, her answer was almost always yes. “I didn’t let anything stop me,” she says.

Still Home, Still Herself

Pauline still lives alone, and she does it by choice. She keeps her own house, cooks her own meals, and only recently handed off the grocery shopping to her son Donald. She drove herself everywhere until she was past 95, stopping only when she decided it had become too dangerous for others on the road. “I want to stay at home as long as I can,” she says simply. She has weathered her share of surgeries over the years and credits her steadiness to something deeper than good doctors. “What you can’t help, you let God take care of it,” she says. “And he will take care of it if we let him. I’m sure every night when I go to bed, I’m watched over real well, because I wake up every morning happy.”

The Roof Over All of It

About 21 years ago, a hail storm rolled through Pauline’s part of Murfreesboro and beat up roofs all over the neighborhood, hers included. Insurance covered a replacement back then. Two decades later, after a run of storms this past year, the signs are back. Donald found pieces of roofing in the backyard that had blown loose. The ceiling in her den has leaked, and she keeps something on the floor just in case. Two or three roofers have looked at it, and they all agree. She needs a new roof. For most widows on a fixed income, that sentence carries a quiet kind of dread. A roof is one of the largest expenses a homeowner ever faces, and it tends to arrive uninvited. But Pauline does not have to worry about the bill, because Books of John is taking care of it. Books of John is a nonprofit founded by Eric, who also runs a roofing company here in Middle Tennessee. The idea behind it is beautifully simple. His company serves paying customers across the region the way any roofing company does, and the work it does makes it possible to give roofs and home repairs to widows for free. The customers we serve every day are the reason widows like Pauline never see an invoice. One business quietly feeds the other, and people who have given so much to their communities get to stay safe and dry in the homes they love. When we told Pauline what that meant, she was characteristically gracious. “It is just wonderful to know that there are people like that, and that we can get help when we need it,” she said. “That is why I say God looks out for us if we let him.” And then, in her own words, she had a message she wanted to pass along.

“Thank you, Books of John, for taking care of me and widows like me.”

Looking Ahead to 99

Pauline turns 99 this July, and she is already looking forward to it the way she looks forward to most things, with thankfulness rather than fear. “I’m just so thankful that I have reached 99 at the health I have,” she says. “I am looking forward to another wonderful year.” So are we. It is an honor to help keep a roof over a life this full, this strong, and this kind. If you know a widow in Middle Tennessee who could use a hand with her home, or if you would like to learn how your own roofing project helps make stories like Pauline’s possible, we would love to hear from you. Learn more at booksofjohn.org.

After 20 Years in Her Home, Laura Is Getting a New Roof

Laura Qualls has lived in her house for about 20 years, and for the last 11 of them she has kept it on her own. It is the home she shared with her husband, the home where they raised their daughter, now 33, and the home she has every intention of staying in. But around Christmas, a little brown spot showed up on a bedroom ceiling, and it turned out to be a much bigger problem hiding just above it. This season, through the nonprofit Books of John, Laura is getting a brand new roof, free of charge, along with repaired soffits and a sealed-up attic and crawlspace to keep her home sound for years to come. This is her story, and it is exactly why Books of John exists.

A Homecoming Float at MTSU

Laura met her husband the way the best stories tend to start, completely by accident. She was working on a homecoming float at MTSU when he walked out of a nearby apartment with a friend she happened to know, and before long he was working on the float right beside her. “I guess you could say it was history from then,” she says. They married three years later and built a life together, one that included a daughter and, eventually, the house Laura still calls home.

“I Would Not Ever Regret That Time”

Then her husband got sick. Laura became his caregiver, walking with him through his illness the same way she had walked beside him in everything else. “It was a whole lot taking care of him,” she says, “but I would not ever regret that time.” He passed away 11 years ago. Since then, every repair, every decision, and every worry about the house has landed on Laura alone.

A Sanctuary That Needs Keeping

“Your home, that’s your safe place, your sanctuary,” Laura says. “You need to have upkeep on your home, but sometimes it gets very overwhelming, and you just don’t know what you need or who to call.” Keeping up a house is an expensive chore, she will tell you, and doing it alone is a whole other level. Small problems have a way of hiding until they are big ones. “There are so many things that can go wrong with a home, and sometimes I don’t even realize that something has happened until it’s too late.” And then there is the quieter fear so many widows know well, the worry of not knowing who to trust or whether you are about to be taken advantage of. “I think that’s where Books of John comes in,” she says.

A Little Brown Spot on the Ceiling

Around Christmas, Laura noticed a small brown spot on the ceiling in one of her bedrooms and called Eric, who runs Books of John. “I need you to come over,” she told him. “Can you come take a look at it?” Eric got the drone out and ran the same kind of scan we perform every day, and what he found above that little stain was a hole roughly two feet across. Instead of a patch, Laura is getting a whole new roof, plus repaired soffit holes and a critter-proofed attic and crawlspace, so she can stay in the home she loves for a long time to come. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Laura told Eric she was falling apart with worry over her roof. His answer stuck with her. “There’s no need to fall apart,” he said. “We will get this taken care of.” And that is exactly what is happening.

“It makes me feel so good to know that Books of John is taking care of me, that they care about me, and that they love me.”

Helping Widows Be Seen

Books of John is a nonprofit handyman service for widows and widowers, founded by Eric, who also runs a roofing company here in Middle Tennessee. Volunteers handle the day-to-day basics, light bulbs, drippy faucets, winterizing, small repairs, and, when it is needed, projects as big as Laura’s roof. In just two and a half years, the ministry has grown to serve more than 350 ladies across the region. “A lot of them just say they don’t feel heard. They don’t know who to trust,” Eric says. “I don’t want them to feel lost. I don’t want them to feel unseen or just scared to ask a question or ask for help. That’s what we’re here for. We just want to help and let them be seen.” If you know a widow in Middle Tennessee who could use a hand with her home, or if you would like to learn how your own roofing project helps make stories like Laura’s possible, we would love to hear from you. Learn more at booksofjohn.org.