From Building to the ReStore: Pat Little’s Habitat Legacy

Her name may be Little, but her contributions have been anything but. Meet Patricia “Pat” Little, a veteran of Habitat for Humanity who has been giving her time to the cause for 14 years. After working for years in a school setting, Pat wanted to find a way to donate her time and give back to the community she loves. She found a way to do just that when on an excursion with her church, Pat discovered Habitat. She volunteered for a build, along with other members of her church, and quickly made a name for herself as the “cleaning lady” of the build. In Pat’s words, this is because she “can’t drive nails”, but liked the painting aspect of construction and was always able to help with the cleanup of the site.

Pat may have been finished with the building aspect of her volunteer work, but she was far from done donating her valuable time. She decided to volunteer at the ReStore in Gainesville, and has stayed with them through 4 different location moves and several hard-working years. Today, you can find her doing pricing and inventory work at the Murphy Boulevard store, working with some of the smaller home goods items, as well as staying true to her “cleaning lady” moniker by helping keep the store and inventory in great shape.

Pat has loved every moment of her time with Habitat, even when she was working outside of her comfort zone while doing construction. She loves the people mostly, which is something that most people have probably learned to appreciate during the tumultuous year-and-a-half that the world has lived through recently. But Pat also loves helping people, and indeed that is why she has been with Habitat for so long now. She shared her experience working with prospective homeowners as they worked towards their sweat equity, talking about how volunteers and homeowners alike learn a great deal thanks to Habitat. She shared many hours with people working hard to build these homes, talking about the work itself, the hours they have put in, and their families. Pat says it is wonderful bumping into homeowners in the “real world”, and getting to talk to them about life. As for her own life, Pat does not show any indication of slowing down her work, and has even brought her grandson into the fold in the hopes that he decides to start volunteering at the Marietta location. All that can be said of Pat Little is that Habitat is incredibly privileged to have a volunteer like her.