Middleboro: Robin's Children

Home, sweet home in Middleboro

Tom White, a union electrician from Middleboro, gathered an army of volunteers to add a second-floor on the home of a couple with four children who took in their orphaned niece and nephew last year.

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Marc Vasconcellos/The EnterpriseAaliyah Daggett, 3, stands in front of her Middleboro home with Al Cronin, director of client services for the Sacred Heart food pantry, and local electrician Tom White. Aaliyah and her brother, Gardo, moved into the small home of their aunt and uncle, Darlene and Frank Millette, who already had four children, after their parents died last year.


By Michele Morgan Bolton
The Enterprise Posted Dec. 23, 2014


MIDDLEBORO - Tom White says he was guided by an internal voice when his friend Robin Daggett died, something deep and powerful he couldn’t ignore that urged him to help her grieving family.

Daggett died in October 2013, following the death of her husband, Edgardo, by just months – a dual tragedy that orphaned their children, Aaliyah, 2, and Gardo, 14.

Robin’s sister, Darlene Millette, and her husband, Frank, immediately took in their niece and nephew.

But as White recalled last week, while the 800-square-foot home was filled with love, it was also already stuffed to the gills with the couple and their own four children.

So then the voice, the instinct, the heart of Tom White spoke up as he was walking his dog by the home. And he knew he had to add a second floor to the Sproat Street residence.

But how?

The rest was something like magic, as he tells it, and over the next six months, during an intensive fund-raising campaign, White says he saw the face of true goodness in friends and strangers alike.

Brother electricians at IBEW Local 103 stepped up to volunteer, as did Yale Electric of Dorchester, the town’s St. Vincent de Paul Society, and the owner of Triple Crown Glass, who offered all the windows.

People drew up plans for free and donated HVAC work. The town came through on fund-raisers and donations.

An entire kitchen, the flooring and anything else the family needed was pledged.

Then came the miracle, White said, when Greg Maroney of Maroney Building and Contracting in Lakeville offered to build the addition.

“And then I knew that the friends who were urging me on had more faith in me than I did,” White said. “I had needed someone to take my army of volunteers and tell them what to do. And there he was.”

On May 3, life changed on Sproat Street when that cadre of framers and carpenters, plumbers and electricians and others put on a second floor and half of the roof in just 12 hours.

Today, work estimated at about $150,000 is in the final stages – with just a bathroom and a bedroom left to finish.

Now the family can really begin to heal, White said.

Frank Millette said his family never questioned taking in Robin’s children, even though their home was small.

And there aren’t enough thanks for White, who went door-to-door for six months seeking funds for the project before the rest fell into place.

“He certainly made the best of a sad situation,” Millette stressed. “And he helped this family to be able to move forward and grieve properly.”

White, who also acts in area theater productions, admitted the effort has taken an emotional toll.


“I’m not the same person,” he said. “It consumed my life and changed me in ways I don’t even understand myself.”

He said he is proud of what he did, but if he had a Christmas wish, just one more thing, it would be that someone would donate a vehicle for the family of eight or help work on the one they have.

They have already been through so much, he said, fighting emotion. “That would be the cream of the crop. The icing on the cake.”


http://middleborough.wickedlocal.com/article/20141223/NEWS/141228536#141228536/?Start=1&_suid=141951976599508764725659638153