OGDEN — Summer's sizzle has brought a new coat of paint and a group of young friends to Joe and Thelma McQueen's small cottage, where good works and good times obscure the political labels that often attach themselves to the process of "lov(ing) thy neighbor as thyself."
In neighborhoods that beg for urban renewal, more than 100 Christian youths from across the United States have come to spend a week of their summer break working in the sun. After raising almost $500 each to fund their trip, they've taken up ladders, power tools, hammers and paint brushes to put a new face — and renewed hope — on both the exterior of old homes and the interior of the owners' hearts.
It's a personal edict straight out of Exodus, where God commands care for one's neighbors as a key to the living water of Christian service — a water that takes on new meaning in 100-plus degree heat.
Especially when the cans of white paint destined to cover the house also coat the arms and legs of the painters. Kaitlyn Amick, 13, of Loveland, Colo., is the youngest member of the Ogden Group Workcamp. She's all smiles with a paintbrush in hand and most visible body parts colored bright white — possibly a new take on sunscreen.
"I went to Michigan (on a similar teen mission trip) last year, and I'll be going again next year," she says, dabbing at the weather-worn wood on the McQueens' front porch. "I just had a great experience getting close to God and serving people."
Ashley Greenwell, 17, from Jeffersonville, Ind., who has managed to avoid the new skin coating, leans around the ladder at the side of the house to assure a reporter she's having a great time, despite the heat. "It's just a great experience. I really like helping other people, and it makes us see how great we have things back at home."
Asked if her peers think she's crazy to spend several hundred dollars of her own hard-earned cash to travel cross-country and paint a house for people she's never met, she smiles knowingly. "Actually, they ask a lot of questions about it. It's a good way to tell them about God."
The teens are two of thousands of Christian youths who volunteered for similar service projects both at home and abroad this summer through the Group Workcamps Foundation, a division of Group Publishing in Loveland, Colo. Founded in 1977 after flooding devastated that Colorado community and Christian teens mobilized to help repair the damage, the foundation has since assisted more than 350,000 residents with home repairs in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America.
The endeavor is among dozens of organized ministries throughout the United States that offer teens a chance to get outside themselves each summer through serving people they've never met in locations they've never visited before. By summer's end, Group Workcamps will have facilitated the work of some 240,000 volunteer teens during its 19-year history — with 170 different camps this year involving some 27,000 youths, according to local director Tom Keene.
At one point, Ogden leaders expected up to 400 youths for this week's effort, but 110 came. Keene attributed the drop-off in projected volunteers to the large number of Group Workcamps set up along the Gulf Coast region, involving about 6,500 volunteers in Hurricane Katrina-related relief work.
A music leader at Community of Grace Presbyterian Church in Sandy, Keene got involved in the summer mission trips several years ago when he worked in his congregation's youth ministry, and asked the teens what type of summer experience they wanted most. Almost unanimously, they chose a service-type mission trip.
He was so impressed by the initial experience with youths from his own congregation that he now takes at least a week or two of personal vacation time each summer to help supervise camps at a variety of locales, he said. "The goal is to involve kids in an experience that will help them grow spiritually through service to people in need."
Campers from a variety of churches in New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Washington, Indiana and Colorado arrived at Weber State University on Sunday, where they were divided into work teams that mixed youths from different churches together with at least one adult team leader. Their work began Monday as they prepped some 20 Ogden homes for painting, railing and exterior ramp construction.
Karen Thurber, project coordinator for Ogden city, said planning for the youth project has been under way since November 2004, and has involved dozens of local residents affiliated with several different denominations and corporations, who have donated money, food and services to the effort.
Some 160 Ogden homes were identified through faith-based referrals as potential candidates for some rehabilitation, she said. Of the 20 selected for the project, all but one are owned by elderly and disabled residents. The other home houses a single mother with children, Thurber said.
Local residents and businesses — including Sherwin Williams, Wheelwright Lumber, Home Depot and New York-based GE Consumer Credit — donated several thousand dollars in cash and materials for the project. Money not used for the current rehab will go toward a September rehab project of an additional 15 homes to be carried out by volunteers and coordinated through Ogden city, Thurber said.
Jeff Riley, a youth pastor from Seattle, said talking with the homeowners was a highlight of the work project. Joe McQueen is in his late 80s, but still plays jazz music on the saxophone that has defined his adult life. "He was so thankful that we came, and he has a lot of insight," Riley said. "It's amazing that the one week we spend here, he'll remember for the rest of his life."
McQueen was literally stranded in Utah in 1945 when the manager of his jazz band blew the group's money on a gambling binge in Las Vegas. He and his wife, Thelma, simply stayed and have been in Ogden ever since. In the mid-20th century, Ogden's railroad depot was a major stop on the line from east to west, and McQueen ended up playing with a variety of jazz greats during his career, including Count Basie and Ray Charles.
He played a variety of jazz clubs in Ogden for decades, while holding down different day jobs.
Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt honored McQueen with a governor's award for the arts in 1992, and subsequently designated a day in April in his honor. A recent documentary was made on his life, "King of O-Town," and a modest photo of him with some of his jazz band buddies in the background hangs in the living room of the modest home that got a new coat of paint this week.
Riley says he won't soon forget the gregarious and humble man with a storied past.
"He thought it was amazing that in a world where everyone serves themselves that we would be serving others. That was great for the kids to hear."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com