LOXLEY - Candace Vick carried an elegant note on Saturday, the timeless lyric of tribulation and redemption, “Amazing Grace,” just before she received the keys to her new home. 

“Through many dangers, toils and snares / we have already come / T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far / and Grace will lead us home.”

This enduring hymn she sang was akin to a grace that began nearly two years ago when she, a single mother, carried her seven children away from the rage of Hurricane Rita, which ravaged their 2-bedroom duplex in Vinton, Louisiana, a small town of just over 3,000, near the Texan border. 

They fled just before Rita smacked Vinton - Sept. 24, 2005. 

And like the sailor without a compass, but the winds swirling mighty, Candace, 34, headed due east, away from the center of the storm. 

While traveling to safety on Interstate 10 on the course of the unknown with no direction home, she called a relative who lived in Alabama. 

“She asked where are you going? And I said I have no idea,” Candace recalled in a recent interview. 

Her aunt recommended that she should head to Summerdale and stay with her until Rita blew over.

A week later, Candace called the Vinton Police Department, a town where she said “everybody knows, everybody,” and they related that her home was battered and her possessions would need to be recovered - as much as that was possible.   

Candace rented a U-haul, heading back along the I-10 corridor by herself, now that her children were safe in Summerdale.

Upon arriving in Vinton, she witnessed the raw aftermath of Rita on her town and her home. 

“The eye of the hurricane actually passed seven miles to the west of the apartment,” Candace said. 

She stepped through the now-contorted doorframe, mildew wafting through the air, as the storm tore the roof off, letting tropical rain pour throughout her home. 

Everything electric short-circuited and smoldered to uselessness. Most clothing smelled of rot. Every bed, except the one for her youngest, 3-year old Daniel, was ruined. 

“I salvaged everything I could,” Candace said.

She returned to Summerdale and soon FEMA assistance arrived in the form of a paid hotel room at the Hampton Inn in Foley. 

“It wasn’t easy at all, living in a hotel room with seven children.  It’s not fun at all.  Rebuilding your lives, it’s not fun, but we did it.”

Three months later the FEMA reimbursement for the Hampton expired, but the family was allowed to stay at a rent-free house for a period of time, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

But a fortunate twist of fate would come along in March 2006, a half-year after Rita shook Louisiana’s parishes. 

Candace applied to be one of Habitat for Humanity of Baldwin County’s Partner Families, which meant that if she was selected as a person in need of a home, she would have to complete 200 hours of volunteer labor, called sweat-equity by the program.

One hundred hours of her time would be dedicated to building another family’s home and the remaining 100 hours would be divided among six homeownership workshops, such as budgeting classes, that educate the program’s participants on homeownership.   

She also had to maintain three months of positive cash flow and be able to make a $500 down payment toward her own home, along with eventually paying the mortgage at a charitable zero percent interest rate. 

Then, after completing the first 200 hours, she would be placed on a build-list, meaning she was a candidate for a home, but not yet a recipient. 

With seven children – Daniel, 3, Jewell, 4, Macenzie, 5, Kaylah, 8, Torianna, 9, Aeren, 12, and Zachary, 13 – all to her own, and a full-time job at AutoZone in Robertsdale, Candace had nearly an insurmountable task to juggle. 

But, she had the willingness from day one.

In her application to Habitat for Humanity, she wrote: “We have gone from having the necessities of life and a few extras to now just having each other.  Our hope now is that with your agency’s help, we can rebuild our lives and our future.”

Their hope became tangible July 23 when volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, Candace and her children gathered in Loxley as the lumber was delivered to a slice of land chosen for the family by the organization.

And immediately, the site became a flurry of good-hearted nail hammering, roofing and collective sweat in the humidity of the Lower Alabama morning. 

As part of her agreement with Habitat, Candace would have to volunteer 200 hours toward the completion of her home, but that was not so much a task as it was a reality to endure and redeem for her children.

“I’ve been working seven days a week for the past three months,” Candace said without even a hint of frustration or weariness on Saturday, the day she was handed the keys to her 5-bedroom home from Lu Schmidt, the construction site supervisor with Habitat, who guided the building process from beginning to end, taking the home from frame to the final touches of alabaster white on the living room walls.

The first week of construction was assisted by a large group of 35 volunteers from Minnesota.  During the second week, local Habitat for Humanity Partner Families, who are volunteering to get on the build-list, like Candace, dedicated their time, and for the third week, a group of teenagers arrived from a Baptist church in Tennessee. 

And innumerable Baldwin County volunteers fitted tile, ran electrical wiring and readied the plumbing over the remaining weeks winding into August and September. 

The tangible became a hope for the volunteers as they faithfully toiled in the peaked Alabama sun, but knowingly for a “simple and decent” home - the yen of Habitat for Humanity, an Ecumenical Christian Ministry. 

And this Saturday afternoon the mission was finally complete. 

“We just put the door knobs on this morning,” Candace said as volunteers and partner families gathered in her home Saturday afternoon to dedicate their hard work and also, the struggle of the Vick family, from a ransacked apartment in a small Louisiana town to a welcoming home just north of Loxley.  

Cliff Barros, executive director of Baldwin Habitat for Humanity, said: “So many of us are just one tragedy away from needing assistance.”

“This is what the American Dream is all about,” Barros said, just after Candace was handed the keys. 

Zachary, Candace’s eldest child, said through a big smile, “It’s awesome, I get my own room.”

And so it goes, amazing grace.