Miracle workers: Community groups come together to build access ramp for Danville woman

Published 7:47 pm Friday, October 4, 2019

A Danville woman living with severe COPD received more than 24 helping hands on Friday.

Ken Dickey, left, and John Houchin work together to screw on a deck board raising the porch over six inches so that a motorized wheelchair cand easily roll over the threshold.

Pam Vinyard stood outside of her home on John Bowling Court Friday morning holding her portable oxygen machine while breathing through the plastic tubes inserted in her nostrils. But she was smiling the entire time as she watched 12 men build a ramp to her front door.

Vinyard’s fiancé, Stanley Sanders, standing tall beside her, said her COPD condition had gotten worse over the past several months. She’s been admitted to the hospital more than four times in the last six months or so, he said.

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Vinyard said she can’t stand or walk for very long, so she uses a motorized wheelchair.

Now, thanks to the Volunteers in Mission from Centenary United Methodist Church, Helping Hands and Boyle County Family Services, she’ll have accessibility to her front door.

Rex Dawson measures a board before cutting it for a ramp the Volunteers in Mission were building for a home on John Bowling Court on Friday.

Ken Dickey, coordinator of the 12 men who were building the ramp on Friday, said the project cost about $1,000 in supplies, even with the discount they received from Lowe’s.

Helping Hands and Family Services funded the project and Volunteers in Mission supplied the manpower.

Dickey said the group has built about six other ramps here in town for senior citizens in need.

“It is so wonderful,” Vinyard said. “This is a miracle. The good Lord sent them from Heaven.”