Project gives town a fresh coat of paint

Carolynn Middleton knew the idea was a good one. In fact, she knew it would work because she’d seen it work in the past.

While living in Port Huron, Michigan, Carolynn was involved in a project, Community Paintworks, that offered free home paint jobs to elderly and poor families. She also helped paint a home that her Kiwanis club had “adopted.” So when she and her husband moved to Raton, New Mexico, she knew she could keep the project going there. 

“When I moved to Raton,” Carolynn says, “I kept reading in the paper about people always complaining about the town. They said it was run-down. The houses looked horrible.

“So, I thought about it and knew I could do something. I sent letters to all the service groups. Kiwanis and Lions Club called back. Both agreed to join me in Community Paintworks.”

In return, she joined the Kiwanis Club of Raton.

The project worked like this: One house would be chosen in Raton to be painted—free of charge—as long as the family owned the home and the owner was a retiree. Carolynn and the volunteers from Kiwanis and Lions worked with the senior citizens center to find the perfect family. They found a 90-year-old man and his wife, who was in her 80s.

“The most difficult part of the project was getting the owners to understand it was completely free,” Carolynn says. “They were so sweet to us.”

Carolynn negotiated with a Raton home improvement store to get the paint at cost, and the Lions and Kiwanis clubs split the cost.

“Next year, we hope to do two houses,” Carolynn says. “I hope to take nominations from the community and to involve youth from the high school for the labor.

“My goal is to get businesses involved. In the perfect world, we’d hit the ground running on a Saturday morning when the sun is up and go until we finish at night. We could have two teams—one working on each house—and have a competition to see who gets the job done first.”

And, Carolynn says, she’s in it for the long haul, if necessary.

“I’ve worked on houses where we’ve gone so late in the night that we had to use headlights to shine on the house.”