Respected Pros Rallies to Save Fairmont Home

Below you can read the article from the Times West Virginian published 10/04/2025 about a project that was completed through the work of the Respected Pros.

FAIRMONT — Tici Greene loves the wildlife outside her home atop a hillside close to the college.

Once, she watched a chihuahua beat a hasty retreat from a doe who got a little too close, while a stag ate grass nearby. Greene suspects the doe was watching out for her mate, since he was too busy munching to be bothered by the small, yappy dog.

Those days watching the critters outside her home nearly came to an end after the Father’s Day Flood in June. The runoff from the three to four inches of rain on June 15 broke through her walls and flooded her basement.

“I didn’t go clear down, it was everywhere,” Greene said. “I mean, the water was pouring — washer, dryer, freezer. It didn’t get my furnace, thank God. And it didn’t get my hot water tank. The wall was clear gone, all over the floor. And a great big slab of it fell, missed my hot water tank about that far, but the chimney caught that slab.”

The slab came within three or four inches of the water heater.

The sky cleared eventually but Greene’s basement was in ruins. There was a danger that her home would further deteriorate. A City of Fairmont building inspector warned Greene that if something wasn’t done to repair the structure, the city would have to condemn the building, leaving Greene, who is 80, without a place to live.

“You couldn’t walk behind my house,” she said. “It wasn’t stable enough to walk behind. And you could see daylight in my basement.”

Last year, Scott Porterfield and Mitch Wood of Powerwash Bros began assembling a network of trusted contractors. They named the network, Respected Pros.

Porterfield and Wood also participated in the Cultivate WV-Fairmont program which awarded microgrants to over 20 small community groups in the city for community development projects. By July, they launched their network with a ribbon cutting along with state officials at the Fairmont Union Rescue Mission. Porterfield and Wood had built an element of Respected Pros around community support, and it was through the network that Porterfield learned about what had happened to Greene.

One of Greene’s neighbors was also vital in helping Greene reclaim her home. After the flooding, Alphia Martin, who lived a few houses away, came to Greene’s home with her daughter, son-in-law and son-in-law’s mother to help. The family brought in house jacks, which the family used to stabilize Greene’s home. Greene said if Martin hadn’t brought the jacks, the building inspector may have been more adamant about condemning the house.

Martin also took to social media to raise awareness about Greene’s situation. Martin was Porterfield’s first direct point of contact to the situation. When repair work began on the home, Martin also brought food for the contractors, and helped Greene with anything that required an internet connection. Martin’s Facebook post is how Porterfield found Greene.

Porterfield got in touch with Greene, and scheduled a visit to her house. He also saw a few photos Greene sent, which gave an idea of the damage but didn’t show the full extent.

“I found it was a heck of a lot worse than what we thought it was going to be,” Porterfield said. “I was honestly afraid that the City of Fairmont was correct, and the house might end up actually collapsing.”

Greene told Porterfield a contractor had quoted her $30,000 for the repairs. That amount was unmanageable for Greene who is on a fixed Social Security income. After some negotiation, the contractor lowered his estimate to $15,000.

Around the same time, Gov. Patrick Morrisey was working to get disaster relief approved for Fairmont and Marion County. Before the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal organizations that provide disaster relief can distribute their aid, they require authorization from the federal government. Porterfield was nervous. His own parents had suffered extensive damage to their home from a flood and he had watched them try to navigate the government bureaucracy to get help. The government was less than accommodating, he said.

With Greene, he worried the house might collapse before the government could reach Greene with the money for the repairs. So to mitigate that, he tried to get the ball rolling on finding contractors who could help. His hope was by the time the government opened its coffers, a team of respected pros would be ready to jump in. Tony Jackson, owner and general contractor for OneSource Residential Services, stepped up to help.

“It was an uphill battle because of the budget she got versus what the task kind of was,” Jackson said. “It was all way off balance.”

Greene received less than $10,000 from the federal government. However, Greene was able to avoid the headaches others in the Fairmont area dealt with when it came to receiving money from the government. Congressman Riley Moore most likely had a large role in securing the money for Greene’s home. His office found out about Greene’s situation when Porterfield called around to various government offices seeking financial help for the repairs.

Greene was eligible for financial assistance after filling out disaster recovery forms at the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center in the Fairmont Public Safety Building. At the ribbon cutting for Respected Pros, Porterfield had the chance to talk to a representative from Moore’s office.

“He was very helpful, said that he already briefed Congressman Moore on the situation, and said that they would be able to help us out in whatever way they could,” Porterfield said. “So I gave them Ms. Greene’s information and kind of left it at that point.”

At first, Greene thought the calls were a scam. So she hung up. But after Moore’s office verified their identity, they called to check up on her. After those phone calls, a check appeared the next day or two for the repairs. Porterfield and Greene said Moore’s office was coy about their involvement with Greene’s home. Moore’s office wouldn’t confirm they were behind the expedited processing for them but teased, ‘maybe they had a little something to do with it.’

Still, the money Greene received was less than enough to finish. But Jackson told Greene to not worry. He would make sure the work was done.

Jackson and Porterfield rallied the community to bring the things they needed to help finish Greene’s basement. They even got volunteers from the Rescue Mission to help. Despite experiencing homelessness, Trey Langford pitched in to help. He had construction experience out in El Paso Texas, and pitching in to help one of his neighbors felt good.

Jackson said two other companies also stepped up to help. WVNanoshield and MPE Rentals contributed to the project. Once the money was in hand, it took Jackson about three weeks to do the work. Jackson and the volunteers cleared out the rubble, built a new wall, addressed her drainage issue and create a nice backfill. A drain trench now directs water away from the house.

“A storm can come in all day against that basement and nothing is coming through,” he said.

Jackson also did work not explicitely required for the repair. He helped repair some pipes that weren’t directing water properly.

Jackson finished Greene’s basement on Oct. 3. Job well done, he took to Washington D.C. for a well earned rest with his family. He credited his faith as a motivating factor for ensuring Greene didn’t have to worry about her home.

Greene is back to appreciating the wildlife around her home. Except for the groundhogs. Those can go away, she said.

Porterfield said the state has always been the red-headed stepchild of all the states.

“Everybody and their brother always talked bad about West Virginia, when that’s the people that’ve never come here,” Porterfield said. “I can’t name a person in West Virginia that wouldn’t give you the shirt off their back. This poor lady, she had no one that was able to help her out at the point in time. But we were in a position that we could.”

Respected Pros meets on the second Saturday of every month at Say Boys at 10 a.m. Morgantown residents can attend meetings every fourth Saturday at Bourbon Prime at 10 a.m.

https://www.timeswv.com/news/local_news/after-flood-community-rallies-to-keep-fairmont-senior-in-her-home/article_1f07eff5-e9b0-49cd-a0cd-19ee9a0ec4dd.html