For more than three decades, Dorothy Fennell and her husband, Merle, gave through ministry, serving several congregations in Jacksonville starting in the late 1970s.
“We pastored Riverside Assembly of God for 10 years. We were at Orange Park Assembly down on Knight Boxx Road and then we were at Maranatha Assembly of God out on Soutel,” Dorothy said. “At Christmas time, when we pastored, I couldn’t stand that so many people didn’t have a place to go. They were always invited to our house. My son never knew who would be with us for Christmas, but that was just me and that was part of me.”
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Dorothy, known as Dot, said they were happy serving the community -- until Merle got sick.
“When he died, my world turned upside down,” the 86-year-old said.
But her house, which they lived in together, gives her comfort.
“This coming August, I’ll have been in this house 36 years,” Dot said. “He’s everywhere. I had him cremated, and I brought him home.”
Dot lives on Social Security, but she said she’s learned to budget.
“I was doing fine until all these things started breaking down at the same time,” Dot said.
She said she had to replace her roof, which cost $10,000, then her A/C broke right after that and she had to get a new system.
“That was so expensive,” she said. “I got that paid for... then the plumbing.”
The copper pipes in her house failed.
She said if she tried running the water, nothing but grit and sand came out of the taps.
“I didn’t want to leave my home. He bought me this home. He bought me this home, and I love it, and I want to stay in it,” Dot said. “When you’re in a situation and you can’t help yourself financially, you got to figure out a way to survive.”
So Dot found a way.
At 86 years old, with no running water in her home, Dot figured out that she could still use her garden hose outside. So she filled gallon jug after gallon jug and hauled them inside one by one, steadying herself with a cane.
“I’ll bring out 12 of these, and I fill up 12 at a time and that will take care of me for two days,” Dot said, demonstrating her plumbing workaround.
Six jugs for each bathroom, then six juice containers by the kitchen sink that she heats in a pot to wash her dishes. She used the bathroom jugs to fill the toilet tank.
“There’s no water coming inside these tanks unless I fill them up when I flush it,” Dot said.
And to bathe, she carried water in four buckets she got at the dollar store and poured them in the tub.
“Then, I’ll heat up my water enough. It’s never hot. It’s barely warm, because I’m not real steady, the rest is sponge baths,” Dot explained.
She lived like that, day after day, for two years.
Until a neighbor noticed the grass in Dot’s yard was waist-high.
“So I went and got my John Deere, and for one week I mowed her lawn,” neighbor Yvonne said.
But then she asked Dorothy for a glass of water.
“She told me that she’d had no running water for a couple of years,” Yvonne said. “It hurt my heart.”
She joined forces with another neighbor, Pam, who called plumbers – with no luck.
“We went to a food bank to get her food and told them, ‘It’s not just food, but she has no running water,’ and they started reaching out to everyone they knew,” Pam said.
Those calls led to Krissy Barkas, executive director of Builders Care of Northeast Florida.
“We go out and provide services to low income elderly, disabled, and veterans in need of emergency home repairs,” Barkas said.
She said Dot’s story was nearly unbelievable.
“My jaw literally dropped,” Barkas said. “I couldn’t fathom that someone her age was having to fill jugs for her to function during the day. We have a waiting list of more than 300 people. This one definitely took priority over everything.”
Barkas called Steve Mandelbaum, a Builders Care board member and owner of The Greatful Plumber.
He couldn’t believe it either.
“She told me all about the buckets, and I was like, ‘Really, Krissy? That’s what she’s doing?’ At that point, I told her, ‘I’m in. We’ll help this woman,’” Mandelbaum said.
Yvonne and Pam delivered the good news to Dorothy in person.
“She was in shock,” they said.
Dot said she was overwhelmed.
“I was amazed because no one had done that before,” Dot said. “When my husband died, it was as if I died too. People sort of forgot about me, and I got older … It was like God just opened up the door and things started happening. For so long, I just felt like nobody cared.”
But she found out some people cared very much.
Within a matter of days, The Greatful Plumber was installing new pipes in Dorothy’s home and replacing her water heater.
Just the pipework would have been a $10,000 bill. But Dot didn’t have to pay a dime.
When Dot turned on the tap in her kitchen and saw water running in her home for the first time in two years, it was an emotional moment.
“I’ve gone from survival to enjoyment,” she said through tears.
She said her first hot bath in years was wonderful.
“I didn’t want to get out,” she said with a laugh.
Mandelbaum and Barkas found out Dorothy loves bubble baths, and they shared one more surprise for her. A basket full of bubble bath supplies.
Yvonne and Pam said Dorothy’s story is a lesson to us all to get to know our neighbors.
“She suffered in silence,” they said. “Unless you take the time to go out there talking to your neighbors, how do you know?”
They said it could be easy to just walk by instead of stopping to ask if a neighbor needs help.
“So many people are out there in this situation, and people don’t even know about it, and they need to know what the resources are,” the neighbors said.
To learn more about how to qualify for help from Builders Care or to help with its mission, call: 904-727-3443 or visit builderscare.org.
