Why would someone donate thousands of dollars in labour and materials to a stranger?
Perhaps it’s because that someone — seeing a decent human being in tough circumstances — never forgot how strangers helped them when they were in need.
You’ve likely heard the story of Good Samaritan Jeremy Locke, the 25-year-old Bridgeport, Cape Bretoner who put a new roof — for free — on the home of Glace Bay’s Jeanette MacDonald.
In a series of recent stories, The Cape Breton Post’s Sharon Montgomery-Dupe chronicled how Locke, moved by the sorry condition of MacDonald’s roof and worried, with winter coming, about her and the four grandchildren living there, re-shingled her place on his own dime.
Inspired by Locke’s generosity, other individuals and companies then chipped in everything from a heat pump to new beds to help out the 70-year-old grandmother and her grandkids.
I called Jeremy up to ask him about himself.
“Buddy, I can’t even begin,” he says. “My life experiences started a long time ago. I know I’m only 25. When I was 15 years old, I got kicked out of my family home for being a bad kid. I was a bad kid.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve just been very, very fortunate that, along the way, that people could still see the good in me.”
Inspired by his grandfather, Flynn Locke, Jeremy says he’s been swinging a hammer — which he says he then called a “shipadieu” — since age three.
He first looked for work in Alberta then went to Newfoundland, where he lived in a car for months while searching for a place for his wife and young family.
“There are people out there who will help you out. In Newfoundland, I had this guy at the gas station who used to keep me fed in hot dogs,” he says. “They made sure we didn’t go hungry.
“I learned a lot of life’s lessons, man. I had strangers take me in. And I don’t mean … sketchy strangers. I mean people who worked real jobs, and had a life, and just believed in you because you were a good person, too.”
His grandfather had had it tough, too, he says. With several children at home, Flynn commuted to Halifax to learn carpentry while raising a family in Cape Breton.
“I see that as inspiration. If he can do that, then I can live in a car.”
Flynn worked alongside Jeremy on MacDonald’s roof.
After Newfoundland, Jeremy says, he lived for a few months in his car in Halifax, working for Steve Parsons of Don & Son Contracting.
“Steve was a really good man,” he says, who “helped me become who I am today.”
Parsons taught him all he needed to know to go into business for himself, giving him “the confidence to step out and do my own thing.”
For his part, Parsons — whom I talked to Wednesday — called Jeremy a "very positive, very upbeat," likable chap who "always had a smile on his face." He said he wished Locke all the success in the world.
Jeremy started his own company, Locke's Roofing and Construction, in September 2018.
He mentions more names, more stories, of others who helped him along the way. It’s clear Jeremy’s a man who doesn’t forget the kindnesses others have shown him.
And now, he says, he wants to keep giving back. He’d like to try to do something similar to the recent free roofing — for other deserving people truly in need, like Jeanette MacDonald — every year.
But Jeremy’s not done advocating for Jeanette quite yet.
Despite recent donations, he says there’s still one big, unaddressed problem. Her house is sinking. She desperately needs a foundation or, at least, a frost wall.
With that, Jeremy says, “she’d be able to leave that house to her grandchildren.”
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