Team Leader and Volunteer Profiles
Welcome to our new series celebrating the dedicated Rebuilding Together Team Leaders and volunteers, who come from all walks of life—engineering, construction, government, diplomacy, the military, and more.
The profiles are written by Leon Rubis (pictured at right), a retired journalist and editor who started volunteering with us in 2021. A long-time DIYer, Leon says, “I thought I knew a lot, but I’ve learned so much more from working alongside our experienced teams. Every project feels like an episode of This Old House.”
In addition to making repairs and modifications with us as part of the RT Express program, Leon is now using his writing skills to spotlight the amazing people who make our work possible.
Team Leader Profile – Jim Dillon
Jim Applies Do-it-Yourself Skills to Volunteering
When people need help, Jim Dillon doesn’t wait for nonprofit agencies to organize a response. The long-time Rebuilding Together volunteer often jumps in on his own.
After Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast in 2005, Jim leaped into action—ultimately making six trips to Mississippi and New Orleans to repair damaged homes.
He first helped a family friend in Bay St. Louis, Miss., whose two brothers’ low-lying homes were flooded. Jim and a friend stayed for three weeks in another damaged house owned by a sister while repairing it and other homes.
That led to volunteering for a small Catholic church in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Many of the parishioners had left their flooded homes, leading the pastor to fund home repairs and recruit volunteer workers “just so we can bring people back to his parish.” Jim and other volunteers stayed on the second floor of the church school. “They found houses for you to work on during the day, and just gave you an address, [saying] go on over and help these folks as best you can.”
All in the family
Jim, raised in Hamburg, N.Y., perhaps inherited some mechanical talent along with a desire to help others. His father was a civil engineer and two older brothers also became civil and mechanical engineers. A sister became a missionary with the Maryknoll nuns and has “traveled all over the world doing all kinds of good things for all kinds of different folks.”
Jim graduated from the University of Buffalo in 1971 with a mechanical engineering degree. He moved to Northern Virginia for a civilian job with a U.S. Army research and development center at Fort Belvoir until retiring in 2003.
Jim initially wrote specifications for construction equipment the Army purchased, and later designed vehicles and systems that could clear land mines. Other work involved retrofitting vehicles like Humvees and cargo trucks with mine blast protection such as deflectors, seats that absorb blast impacts, fragment-resistant floor mats, and extra seat restraints.
Despite his independent self-starter streak, Jim has volunteered with a variety of nonprofit service organizations.
He started working for Rebuilding Together’s predecessor, Christmas in April, after seeing a television news report about one of its local repair projects in 1994 and thinking “Wow, that’s pretty cool. I’d like to do that.”
In 1996, Jim also started working with the Catholic Diocese of Arlington’s Work Camp summer program, in which high-school-age parishioners stay for a week at a school in Virginia while working on repairs for local homeowners referred by local governments, churches and word-of-mouth.
“We started working on maybe a couple of dozen houses during the mid ‘90s. And over the years that has grown to maybe 800 kids working on over 100 homes for four days.”
The teens are accompanied by adult chaperones and “contractors” like Jim who provide technical training and supervision to the work crews. “I hand them all the tools and show them how to do it. And then I watch them for a while and if they feel comfortable with it—go for it.”
A Travellin’ Van
Even with Work Camp, Jim has independently extended his efforts beyond the organized summer program.
He and others visit and evaluate houses in the fall to work on next June. But “when you go into a house and see that the hot water heater’s leaking or the furnace doesn’t work, well, you can’t just tell the family, ‘I’ll be back in six months to help you’—they need it right now. So [with] a few friends of mine that I met at Rebuilding Together, we volunteered our time to go out and do some of these projects ahead of time.
“And then, like with Rebuilding Together, once you get into these projects and sometimes you can’t finish them during the day, you may have to go back a time or two after that. And that was the same thing with summer camp with the high school kids. You got to go back the next week or the next month and try to finish off all the projects.”
Such dedication prompted Jim to buy himself a retirement gift in 2004—a 2003 Chevrolet van that serves as a traveling hardware store. “I learned from summer camp that when you work far away from the local hardware store, you try to bring as much of the stuff as you can.” Jim’s wife Joan, who was supportive of his sometimes lengthy volunteer trips, first saw the van for sale and encouraged him to buy it.
One of Jim’s most challenging projects with Rebuilding Together was a small condemned house it renovated in 2017 in Fairfax City. Foundation leaks from rain and plumbing led to termite infestations and structural deterioration making the house uninhabitable. Rebuilding Together volunteers worked more than 2,400 hours on the house—1,000 of them by Jim—aided by volunteers, funding and supplies from many other local nonprofits, government agencies and contractors. While Jim credits “a whole team effort for all the different things that needed to be done in the house,” his own contributions earned him the 2018 Senior Volunteer award from Volunteer Fairfax.
A Job For Everyone
Jim emphasizes that you don’t need extensive knowledge or tools to volunteer for Rebuilding Together. He encourages amateur handymen and women at all skill levels to volunteer and learn on the job. “There are always projects, parts of a task that can be done by people who have little or no skills. So, don’t be afraid that you don’t know how to do all these things.”
Even with Jim’s extensive background, “Every project I work on is a learning experience, whether it’s the technical aspects or just dealing with different groups of individuals.”
Jim enjoys the “challenge of going into different situations and being able to finish it all in a relatively short amount of time.” And he appreciates that Rebuilding Together offers flexible scheduling and local opportunities. “One thing that made it attractive for me was that these are my neighbors that I drive by quite frequently. You’re helping your local neighbors.”
Links:
Catholic Diocese of Arlington Work Camp
Nonprofit welcomes Fairfax City resident back home
Love Your Neighbor Made Manifest – Community Rebuilds Fairfax Home
‘Celebrating the Magic of Giving Back’ in Fairfax County
