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2005 Community Preservation Program Article
A Home of My Own
by Eliza Coyne
by Eliza Coyne
In March, some 170 volunteers converged on Thomasville’s Stevens Street National Register
District neighborhood to restore four older homes. It was the ninth year of Thomasville
Landmarks’ Community Preservation project, which rehabilitates older homes for low-income
homeowners. The effort is important to the neighborhoods that benefit from a sprucing-up, as
well as to volunteers who spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars rebuilding
porches, doing roof repairs, replacing windows and doors, fixing plumbing, and adding fresh
paint. But the project means most to the owners who watch their homes transformed over the
course of a few weekends. This year, volunteers refurbished the homes of Marian Gibson (400
Calhoun Street), Lennie Pearl O’Neal (518 Pine Street), Roberta Brown (421 Pine Street) and
Natlean Trice (620 Pine Street). Any of these women could tell you how much their homes, and
Landmarks’ work, have meant to them. Natlean Trice told us her story of how Landmarks not
only preserved her home, but also decades of family memories.
In 1968, astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission orbited the moon for the first time. That same year a
Thomasville maid named Natlean Trice took, for her, an equally historic step. After decades of
renting, the mother of two teenage daughters finally bought a home.
An older friend she looked up to planted the seed.
“Baby,” the woman told Trice, “you need to own a house because you have children. Don’t move
around like I did. I know a nice place with two bedrooms.”
It made sense. “Yes, ma’am,” Trice replied.
The fact that she and her husband had no money for a down payment did not get in their way.
They borrowed the $500 they needed, and began the $87.50 mortgage payments they would
pay every month for the next 30 years.
“I was real excited because I was like, ‘I don’t have to move no more,’” said Trice, now an
energetic 70-year-old with a black bob and large eyeglasses. “I think about it as a God-sent
thing to me, and I think about how good he was to me that I could say, ‘I have a home of my
own.’”
Trice and her family moved into 620 Pine Street, a green clapboard house off Calhoun Street
with a nice backyard. The trains that rattled along the tracks across the way took some getting
used to, but Trice was proud of her new home. For the first time, she could arrange her place
just the way she wanted. Like the plaque in her parlor reads, “This is my house and I do as I
darn please.” She and her husband, a truck driver, put down new linoleum. She fenced in the
backyard.
The small house saw many changes come to the family. Trice earned a degree as a nursing
assistant, and began a long career at a local nursing home. The girls graduated high school,
and began families of their own. Keeping busy at church and work, Trice also had a hand in
raising a brood of grandsons and great-grandchildren. In 1980, her husband, Homer, passed
away.
Now retired, Trice’s life is centered on church and home. She was thrilled to have Thomasville
Landmarks select her home as one of its four Community Preservation projects this year. She
got new windows, heaters, screens, doors and a paint job out of the deal, among other repairs.
As volunteers put on the finishing touches last April, Trice looked forward to many more years in
her “new” home. She can’t imagine ever leaving.
“Oh, that’d break my heart,” she said. “I don’t believe I’d feel comfortable nowhere else.”
After more than three decades, the home is much more than just a shelter; it’s an extension of
Trice herself. “It’s just comfortable,” she said, the smell of collards wafting from the kitchen. “It’s
just me.”
Indeed; touring Trice’s home is like reading her biography. Paintings of Jesus line the walls of
her parlor, and her collection of church hats are stacked in a corner. In the kitchen, yellowed
recipes are tacked to the wall and chicken for a family barbecue thaws in the sink. The bead
board in her bedroom is all but wall-papered with family photos and gospel plays on the radio.
Highlights of her life are nailed to all the walls: a Certificate of Appreciation for 27 years of
service at Camellia Gardens, a marriage certificate, a grandson’s football award, an
acknowledgment of 12 years as secretary of Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, a 1976
diploma from the University of Florida’s Food Service Supervisors Correspondence Course.
In her front hallway, Trice keeps a collection of stuffed animals her girls left behind, and another
collection of angel figurines. The winged creatures are of different skin colors, and each is in a
different pose: one bears a Christmas gift, one plays accordion, another carries a basket of
flowers, a fourth shows a dragonfly to an awed child.
Trice is aware of the presence of others outside, banging and painting away at her house.
“They are just like God’s angels,” she says. “I believe God gets into people’s hearts and lets
them help people who need help.”
It reminds Trice of her favorite hymn. And she begins, in a low, mellowed voice, to sing:
All day and all night
Angels watching over me, my Lord.
All day, all night
Angels watching over me.
District neighborhood to restore four older homes. It was the ninth year of Thomasville
Landmarks’ Community Preservation project, which rehabilitates older homes for low-income
homeowners. The effort is important to the neighborhoods that benefit from a sprucing-up, as
well as to volunteers who spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars rebuilding
porches, doing roof repairs, replacing windows and doors, fixing plumbing, and adding fresh
paint. But the project means most to the owners who watch their homes transformed over the
course of a few weekends. This year, volunteers refurbished the homes of Marian Gibson (400
Calhoun Street), Lennie Pearl O’Neal (518 Pine Street), Roberta Brown (421 Pine Street) and
Natlean Trice (620 Pine Street). Any of these women could tell you how much their homes, and
Landmarks’ work, have meant to them. Natlean Trice told us her story of how Landmarks not
only preserved her home, but also decades of family memories.
In 1968, astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission orbited the moon for the first time. That same year a
Thomasville maid named Natlean Trice took, for her, an equally historic step. After decades of
renting, the mother of two teenage daughters finally bought a home.
An older friend she looked up to planted the seed.
“Baby,” the woman told Trice, “you need to own a house because you have children. Don’t move
around like I did. I know a nice place with two bedrooms.”
It made sense. “Yes, ma’am,” Trice replied.
The fact that she and her husband had no money for a down payment did not get in their way.
They borrowed the $500 they needed, and began the $87.50 mortgage payments they would
pay every month for the next 30 years.
“I was real excited because I was like, ‘I don’t have to move no more,’” said Trice, now an
energetic 70-year-old with a black bob and large eyeglasses. “I think about it as a God-sent
thing to me, and I think about how good he was to me that I could say, ‘I have a home of my
own.’”
Trice and her family moved into 620 Pine Street, a green clapboard house off Calhoun Street
with a nice backyard. The trains that rattled along the tracks across the way took some getting
used to, but Trice was proud of her new home. For the first time, she could arrange her place
just the way she wanted. Like the plaque in her parlor reads, “This is my house and I do as I
darn please.” She and her husband, a truck driver, put down new linoleum. She fenced in the
backyard.
The small house saw many changes come to the family. Trice earned a degree as a nursing
assistant, and began a long career at a local nursing home. The girls graduated high school,
and began families of their own. Keeping busy at church and work, Trice also had a hand in
raising a brood of grandsons and great-grandchildren. In 1980, her husband, Homer, passed
away.
Now retired, Trice’s life is centered on church and home. She was thrilled to have Thomasville
Landmarks select her home as one of its four Community Preservation projects this year. She
got new windows, heaters, screens, doors and a paint job out of the deal, among other repairs.
As volunteers put on the finishing touches last April, Trice looked forward to many more years in
her “new” home. She can’t imagine ever leaving.
“Oh, that’d break my heart,” she said. “I don’t believe I’d feel comfortable nowhere else.”
After more than three decades, the home is much more than just a shelter; it’s an extension of
Trice herself. “It’s just comfortable,” she said, the smell of collards wafting from the kitchen. “It’s
just me.”
Indeed; touring Trice’s home is like reading her biography. Paintings of Jesus line the walls of
her parlor, and her collection of church hats are stacked in a corner. In the kitchen, yellowed
recipes are tacked to the wall and chicken for a family barbecue thaws in the sink. The bead
board in her bedroom is all but wall-papered with family photos and gospel plays on the radio.
Highlights of her life are nailed to all the walls: a Certificate of Appreciation for 27 years of
service at Camellia Gardens, a marriage certificate, a grandson’s football award, an
acknowledgment of 12 years as secretary of Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, a 1976
diploma from the University of Florida’s Food Service Supervisors Correspondence Course.
In her front hallway, Trice keeps a collection of stuffed animals her girls left behind, and another
collection of angel figurines. The winged creatures are of different skin colors, and each is in a
different pose: one bears a Christmas gift, one plays accordion, another carries a basket of
flowers, a fourth shows a dragonfly to an awed child.
Trice is aware of the presence of others outside, banging and painting away at her house.
“They are just like God’s angels,” she says. “I believe God gets into people’s hearts and lets
them help people who need help.”
It reminds Trice of her favorite hymn. And she begins, in a low, mellowed voice, to sing:
All day and all night
Angels watching over me, my Lord.
All day, all night
Angels watching over me.
P.O. Box 1285
312 North Broad Street
Thomasville, GA 31792
Phone: 229-226-6016
EMAIL: tli@rose.net
312 North Broad Street
Thomasville, GA 31792
Phone: 229-226-6016
EMAIL: tli@rose.net
Thomasville
Landmarks
| Protecting, preserving and promoting the architecture, heritage and history of Thomasville and the Thomas County area. |