Building Ramps on Saturday Mornings

Cedar Valley News
April 17, 2026
Building Ramps on Saturday Mornings
By Dan Larson

Roy Harrington used to be an industrial engineer. He is retired and living in Bryan, Texas. On Saturday mornings, he builds wheelchair ramps.

He has been doing this for fifteen years. He coordinates the volunteers, measures the sites, designs the ramps, and makes sure the materials are there when the crew arrives. Four or five people. A few hours. Less than a thousand dollars in lumber and hardware. And when they leave, someone who has not been able to leave their home can do so.

Harrington is the regional director for the Brazos Valley chapter of the Texas Ramp Project, a nonprofit building free wheelchair ramps for low-income elderly and disabled Texans. The organization has been doing this work since 1985. More than thirty-two thousand ramps. Not thirty-two thousand people helped — thirty-two thousand ramps built by crews of volunteers across the state, each one a morning when a team showed up, cut the wood, drove the screws, and handed someone back a life.

He tells the story of a ramp they built for a woman in his area. Routine job. A few hours, same as the others. Not long after, there was a house fire on her street. Her house. She got out.

Harrington said it plainly: “Many of our clients are essentially trapped in their homes. Being able to get in and out easily can completely change their lives.”

I have spent most of my working life in construction. I know what a set of front steps looks like when they have been neglected long enough to become dangerous. I know what a seven-inch drop off a porch means for a person with a walker. I know what it costs to fix it and what it costs not to. The person who cannot afford the fix does not stop needing to leave their house. They just stop leaving.

This week I came home from a site and drove past a house I pass most days. The woman who lives there uses a wheelchair. Her front steps are broken. There is no ramp. I have driven past many times and registered the fact the way you register most things you see every day — present, noted, filed away under things you mean to do something about.

I stopped this time.

I don’t yet know what will come of it. But the stopping matters. Harrington stopped. Thirty-two thousand times, give or take, someone in the Texas Ramp Project stopped, showed up, and built something. No ceremony. The client comes out and uses the ramp. The crew loads up and goes home. Done.

I have been thinking since General Conference about where repair begins. I came home carrying the question. Two weeks of sitting with it and I think part of the answer is this: repair begins when someone stops driving past.

The Texas Ramp Project operates in Texas. Every state has something like it. Rebuilding Together. Local Habitat for Humanity affiliates. Church service organizations. If you have skills with lumber and an open Saturday morning, there is almost certainly someone in or near Cedar Valley who needs what you know how to do. If you are not sure where to look, start with the neighbors you already pass.

Most of the people who needed thirty-two thousand ramps were not strangers to someone. They were someone’s neighbor. Someone drove past them every day.

If you know someone in Cedar Valley who is trapped in their home by a set of steps, or if you have a Saturday morning and a willingness to help, the Cedar Valley News Facebook group is where the conversation continues. Come tell us what you know. https://bit.ly/40p8jKy

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, Publication Consultants, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town of Cedar Valley are fictional, Roy Harrington and the Texas Ramp Project are real.

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