This past Sunday, the cast of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition swooped in on Lincolnton to inform Devonda and James Friday that their family would be the Christmas season beneficiary of the show's next rapid rebuild.
It was a feel-good moment, the kind the show has become known for in its nine years on the air.
Thirty miles east of Lincolnton, on the outskirts of Davidson, another family waited, hoped and prayed for the phone call that the Fridays had gotten that morning to tell them the Extreme Makeover team was on the way. Like the Fridays, Davidson's Susan and Randy Puckett had filled the producers' several requests for information, and even signed legal documents clearing the way for their appearance on the show.
"We heard there were three families in the running, and we knew that the notification would come Sunday morning," says Susan Puckett. "We were just sitting here waiting. We sent the kids off to church, then we finally just went ahead with our plans for the day."
The Pucketts never got a call, even though sources tell the Citizen that the show's producers picked the Friday family weeks earlier.
"It would have been nice to know that it wasn't us," Susan says.
But she's not complaining, mind you. Those who know the Pucketts well will tell you they don't complain about much of anything, even while raising a half-dozen adopted children from the Philippines in a tiny house with one working bathroom, and putting their two biological sons through college.
"I know the process for selecting families must be difficult, and there are lots of deserving families in the Charlotte area," says Jerri Haigler, vice president of United Way of the Carolinas, who along with other members of First Baptist Church of Huntersville helped nominate the Pucketts. "We just hope that if (the show's producers) ever come back to Charlotte, the Pucketts will be at the top of the list."
Of course, the Pucketts' needs remain, even if they're the last people to ask for help.
Susan, a science teacher at Alexander Middle School, wears a seemingly permanent smile as contagious as a preschooler with pink eye. And Randy exudes a quiet calm that belies his job as a Mecklenburg County Sheriff's deputy — or, maybe it's because it's hard to get a word in edgewise.
Susan and Randy married in July of 1982 and moved into their current house on Christmas Eve, 1983.
"The house (had) electrical and plumbing but no insulation and no sheetrock or paneling on the walls," Susan recalls. "Randy and I and my father did that work as we could."
The Pucketts built the house on pilings so they could add space beneath, which they did with the births of their biological sons, Mike (in 1985) and Mark (1989). The Pucketts again did the interior work on the addition themselves, but hired someone to do the plumbing for the second bathroom.
"It turned out to be a problem," Susan says. "The toilet doesn't drain properly because the pipes were not put into the concrete slab at the right angle. So, everyone uses the upstairs bathroom most of the time."
For the Pucketts, "everyone" means at least 11 people when the whole family is at home. Mike, 26, is married and living in Ohio, where he is a campus minister at Akron and Kent State universities. Mark is finishing his senior year at Chowan University in Murfreesboro.
The accommodations are cramped, but the Pucketts have long eschewed the luxuries of their affluent suburban neighbors. Even before Mike and Mark were born, Susan says, she and Randy knew they wanted to adopt children. They were blessed, after all, with a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food on their table. There wasn't much else they needed. But there were children who needed them.
In 1996, when the Pucketts heard about female babies being killed in China, they decided to adopt a Chinese daughter. But China closed the door to adoptions. So the Pucketts' adoption agency, Christian Adoption Services, suggested they take a look at the Philippines.
In 1997, the Pucketts traveled to the Philippines and brought home their new daughter, 3-year-old Irene.
"We fell in love with the orphanage, the Children's Shelter of Cebu," Susan says. "So when we decided to add another daughter we looked at the Philippine Special Home Finding list and asked for information about several children."
When the time came to adopt again, Irene, then 5, took a special interest. As she looked through a newsletter from the shelter, Irene stopped and pointed to a photograph.
"Irene saw one of the little girls and started crying so hard I couldn't understand her," Susan recalls. "She was saying, 'Mommy, we need to adopt Apple (the little girl's name) because I don't want her to be lonely.' I'm sure she was remembering times when she had felt lonely in the past and just couldn't put it into words yet."
The Pucketts ended up adopting 3-year-old Wendy.
"We went for her in May 2001 and took Mike and Mark with us," Susan says. "We realized later that while we had been in the Philippines bringing Irene home in 1997, that very same week Wendy was born. God had amazed us again."
And the Pucketts would adopt from the Philippines again in 2003, this time bringing home 12-year-old Lloyd and his 8-year-old sister, Sarah. Lloyd and Sarah had to leave their older sister, Cherry Rose, behind in the Philippines. She was 16 at the time and made the choice not to be adopted. The Pucketts have helped Cherry Rose financially, and she is completing her nursing degree.
"It is vital that she finishes" her nursing studies, Susan says. "It could make the difference of living comfortably and being very poor."
With the adoptions of Lloyd and Sarah, the Pucketts thought their family was complete. God, Susan says, had other ideas.
"Two days before my 50th birthday, I got an e-mail telling us that Irene had three brothers at (Children's Shelter of Cebu) and did we want her to be in contact with them," Susan recalls. "I was floored! My first reaction was, 'God, you don't want us to adopt them, do you?'"
The Pucketts began contacting others in their adoption network, hoping to find potential parents for the boys, ages 5, 8 and 9.
"I felt like I was giving away some of my own children," Susan admits. "Randy and I spent several months discussing and praying about whether we should bring the boys home. We finally decided that it was the right thing to do and we decided to go from a family of eight to a family of 11."
Kyle, Cyril and Clyde became the newest members of the Puckett clan — which already had the walls of the family's small house bulging. But perspective is everything. When your frame of reference is an orphanage in Cebu, a self-built home with one working bathroom might as well be a mansion just across Rocky River Road in River Run.
As for the near-miss with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Susan offers the expected just-honored-to-be-considered response. With the Pucketts, though, it would be hard to question her sincerity.
"Several friends actually nominated us," she says. "I am amazed and humbled by their caring."
For a family already amazingly humble, that's saying something.
Another close call
Next week meet a family from Huntersville who was also in the running for a new house. Equally humble, grateful and generous, their need remains as well.
