For the past 16 times, the Boys and Women Club of Dane County has led an HGTV-like initiative with 25 location firms chipping in to renovate and rework a home for Irene Alexander, the good-grandmother of 11-year-outdated Anisa Scott, who was tragically killed in a shooting in August. The formal unveiling, which was the merchandise of weeks of challenging perform and various community partnerships, took spot on Friday early morning at Alexander’s property on Madison’s east aspect.
Loved ones users and neighborhood associates spoke before the official presentation that took area at 11:11 a.m. in honor of Anisa who died on August 13 at 11:11 a.m.
Volunteers renovated every space in Alexander’s household to guidance her for the holiday seasons, flipping the residence in just 16 times. Friday’s unveiling occasion was her 1st glimpse of the outstanding transformation of the household she had lived in for 22 decades.
This 12 months has been primarily tragic for Alexander, who also lost a nephew to a car incident in July, a brother on Labor Day, and her spouse of 53 many years to cancer on November 9.
Alexander’s daughter, Lorraine Gomez, stated there were “no terms that could genuinely express her many thanks and the gratitude to the neighborhood in Madison.”
“All of these volunteers and all of the challenging get the job done … I am incredibly overcome,” she instructed the group that gathered outdoors of her mother’s newly renovated house on Friday. “After the reduction of Anisa, I didn’t feel that blessings existed … I thought that existence was more than for me. I just want to thank you guys so considerably. I don’t know how to thank you ample … all of that really hard perform that went into this. Mother is going to be particularly stunned when she sees this.”
The renovation was the brainchild of Boys and Girls Club CEO Michael Johnson, who read about all of the tragedies that had occurred this 12 months in Alexander’s everyday living and wanted to figure out a way to supply her with some degree of consolation.
“I am so pleased for Mrs. Irene and blown absent that more than 75 people today came forward and donated extra than $120,000 in services to her house,” Johnson tells Madison365. “It was a wonderful experience and presented all the evil happening in the entire world currently, it was a amazing challenge to close 2020.”
Alexander has lived in her home on Madison’s east side with her spouse and grandchildren for 22 decades. She and her relatives have been being at the Governor’s Suite of the Madison Concourse Resort in the course of the residence renovation, courtesy of Steve Zinoni, the basic manager of the Concourse Lodge.