GREAT READ:
Inspired by paralyzed Army vet, Lancaster students build him a new home

By Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times
June 11, 2015

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In her classroom at Lancaster High School, Jamie Goodreau tries to teach her students that history is a living thing, that they can be part of it.

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(Jerral) Hancock's wife left him and the kids. His mother and stepfather became his full-time caretakers, living across the street. Sometimes, when he forgot to ask someone to turn the lights off before bed, he'd just sleep with the lights on, too embarrassed and angry to have to call his parents or wake the kids to turn them off for him.

Hancock wasn't much older than the students, who were stunned by his struggles.

"It broke my heart inside," student Nicole Skinner said. "I thought I knew war was bad, but wow."

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Goodreau's students dubbed themselves OATH — Operation All The Way Home. They spent the summer hawking dog tags, T-shirts, coffee mugs. They passed donation buckets at Lancaster Jethawks baseball games and formed "bucket brigades" outside Wal-Mart. They had pizza nights, flapjack fundraisers, yard sales.

Pretty soon, people all over the Antelope Valley "took the OATH." Inmates at the California State Prison in Lancaster even chipped in with an art fundraiser, selling paintings and handmade jewelry. After word got out about what the students were doing and how much they had already raised, actor Gary Sinise and his Lt. Dan Band put on a benefit concert in Lancaster.

OATH raised $170,000 in under a year; by the end of the second year, more than $350,000 in cash had been raised. A three-acre property in Palmdale was bought, on a quiet lot on a dirt road, with mountain views and big Joshua trees.

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Jerral Hancock rests at his cramped Lancaster mobile home in April 2014. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)


Lancaster High School history teacher Jamie Goodreau writes words of encouragement on a beam in the Palmdale home for Jerral Hancock while it was under construction in February. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)


Story, photos and good VIDEO:
http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-jerral-hancock-20150611-story.html#page=1