Meet Our Newest Homeowner-to-Be: Jackie Aiken

Jacqueline “Jackie” Aiken will be naming her new home on a peaceful plot of land owned by her family for generations “Gratitude”. Her home was sponsored by the Long Cove community on Hilton Head Island.

The concrete foundation has been poured at 55 Evelina Road on Hilton Head Island in the center of a neighborhood created by her family over decades beginning with her great, great grandmother, Louisa Mitchell. Jackie’s mother, Elnora Aiken, will be living right behind her with an aunt next door and an uncle and others not too far away.  This is where Jackie was literally born and raised and she intends to stay there.

“We may not have old money, but we have old dirt,” Jackie said, while sitting with her mother and two of her three daughters on the screened in front porch of her mom’s house on a pleasant spring afternoon. She and her daughters currently live with her mother. When asked if having that many adult women in one house has been a challenge, her mother laughed and said, “Boy has it been!”. Elnora added, “I’m thrilled for her and glad she’s staying just a stone’s throw away.” Jackie said with a smile, “We’re Christians so we do try to implement the fruits of the Spirit: patience, love, joy, peace.”  She said she is looking forward to giving her mother her kitchen back though and having her own place with her name on it.

Almost everything Jackie needs is close by this wooded location mid-island. She is a paraprofessional at Hilton Head Island Early Childhood Center less than a mile away where she assists teachers with lesson plans for three to five-year-olds. The family attends church in Bluffton, otherwise it’s island life for them. But it’s not a resort lifestyle as with other areas of the island. It feels more like living out in the country, rural with little traffic noise and with the quiet interrupted only by planes arriving or leaving the Hilton Head airport periodically.

Jackie was approved for her Habitat home in June of last year and has since been fitting in her required sweat equity hours working at the Bluffton ReStore on Saturdays since she works full time during the week. With approval from Habitat, her mother has been helping work off those hours too. Jackie will be working on her own home as well once the walls go up and construction begins in earnest this week.

When she found out she was approved she immediately felt grateful, but her response to Jan Hunter, Habitat’s Family Services Coordinator was “For real?!”. Since that initial phone call “Jan has gotten a lot of phone calls from me and has been very helpful,” Jackie said.

Above, Jackie Aiken shows off the rendering of what will soon be her new Habitat home while standing by the poured concrete foundation.

Below, Jackie and her mother, Elnora Aiken, by the sponsor sign shortly before the foundation was poured. Hilton Head Island’s Long Cove community is sponsoring her home.

She has a copy of the blueprints and has labelled each room with her preferred colors and theme. “Ayaks (Castellanos, Habitat’s Program Director) told me I’m allowed to choose only one interior color,” she said laughing, but she plans to repaint inside after the home is finished. Jackie considers herself handy and she’s looking forward to working on her home, but said she believes Ayaks will make a carpenter out of her by the time the house is done! She hopes to be able to volunteer to work on other Habitat homes in future, “because when you’re blessed, you share that.”

Jackie said Ayaks has been wonderful to work with, and she especially appreciated how considerate he has been toward her mother, making sure her mother was satisfied with the placement of the driveway and space between the two homes. “He really takes this personally,” she said.

Jackie has many plans for her future in her new home including having extended family stay at her house when they visit, possibly fostering children (boys this time, she emphasized), and eventually having something to pass on to her daughters.

For others hoping to enter the Habitat for Humanity of the Lowcountry homeowner program she encourages them to “persevere, be patient. They’re busy doing something for someone else, so just wait your turn.”

Jackie’s own perseverance and patience have transformed into gratitude and now it is her turn!