Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, October 09, 2008, Pages 1 & 9

When Extreme Makeover Home Edition debuts the story of Job McCULLY and his family for the nation on Sunday, Oct. 26, on ABC television, a Ringgold county man will be watching with deep interest.

The story isn't new to him. Bob McCULLY of Redding helped with the construction of the new home that will be revealed on the show.

Much more than that, however, the people for whom the new home was built are his son Rob and family, including 10-year-old Job, who's battles with disease in his young life show that he was aptly named.

The story for Bob McCULLY begins in 1977 after he retired from the Navy and purchased an old house and 18 acres in Bigelow, AR, a community of some 382 people in central Arkansas northwest of Little Rock, AR.

Bob McCULLY, who has lived in Ringgold county for eight years and is married to the former Barbara MAUDLIN, transferred the property to Rob McCULLY and his family -- Tina, their daughter Nicole and their son Job in 2003.

Job McCULLY'S medical problems are briefly outlined in a separate story, but in March 2008, after a lung transplant, the family was not able to return to their moldy, dilapidated house. The mildew-infested walls were especially threatening to Job and his 2006 bout with fungus may have come from the home.

The family was living in a donated rental property after not being able to return to their home. Help has been received from neighbors for the long battles in the hospital that son Job has had to fight.

Meanwhile the family tried its best to give back as well. Sister Nicole, 12, learned to administer shots to her brother for his diabetes. Rob is a deacon in the church and Tina has spearheaded two successful support groups in her church for struggling young married couples and addicts. Tina's mother Glenda has lived with the family to help out as well.

It was people from the McCULLY'S Church of Christ group who first wrote in to Extreme Home Makeover to recommend that the McCULLY family be part of the program for a new home.

That was followed by gathering paperwork for the nomination.

"More cards of support were sent in for Rob's family than for anyone else in the program so far," Bob McCULLY said.

The McCULLY family knew that they were being considered for the show selection, but it was still a surprise when the bus rolled up on Thursday morning, Aug. 15, and the family heard host Ty PENNINGTON'S patented bull-horned "good morning."

The family was sent off to a Roundtree Resort [Page 8] owned by actor Fess PARKER in Santa Barbara, CA for a week while the old home was demolished and a new one built.

"We got video updates on the building process during our stay in Santa Barbara," Rob McCULLY said in a phone interview. "We got to spend timeout on a double catamaran sailboat with just the family and video crew and to go horseback riding on the beach. It was a great time and very exciting."

Grandfather Bob McCULLEY had been to a family reunion in Hot Springs, AR early in the month and had stopped by to see his son's family on that trip. He last saw the old house August 8 during a visit.

He was in Hot Springs the day that the Extreme Home Makeover staff arrived, brought his wife back to Redding over the weekend and headed back Sunday morning to Bigelow to watch and help with the construction any way he could.

Framing of the new home was already well along when he got back. He was able to help with some of the projects along with the hundreds of volunteers who were part of the week-long project. When people see the holes in the television cabinet in Nicole's room, they will see some of his handiwork.

Family usually are not part of the construction, but Bob McCULLY made friends with the contractors and found ways to help.

He has worked as a remodeling contractor before his retirement but working on the house "doesn't compare to anything I've worked on before."

Some of the details of the construction are shared in a separate story of the effort from the point of view of the general contractor Jack WILSON.

After the relaxing week in California for the McCULLY family, it was back to Bieglow, AR and the shout "Move that bus" that revealed what had been accomplished at their home in the interium.

"It was just simply a beautiful home," Rob McCULLY said. "It hardly seems real at times that this is where we live."

While the return home was filmed on Thursday, August 21, the McCULLYS didn't stay the night that night.

There was still some interior filming that needed to be done for the show, so the McCULLYS were put up in a hotel overnight to return the next day to really "move in."

It's been six weeks or so since the McCULLYS moved in and it is starting to feel like home but its still "unbelievable, McCULLY said.

The home was given to the McCULLYS and because the home was built as a "set" for a television show, there is a tax code wrinkle that takes care of property taxes on the property as well.

Without giving away too much of the surprise for the television audiences, the house has the usual rooms built with family members in mind. The family enjoys camping so there is a firepit and outdoor camping site in the back yard.

There are handicapped accessible amenities for Job and the whole house is built with an open floor plan that makes it accessible by wheel chair from every corner.

Along with the other gifts the McCULLY'S received, the University of Central Arkansas provided full scholarships for both Nicole and Job to attend college at the university, located just 17 minutes from the small town where the family lives.

"It's just an amazing experience to have all this happen," Rob McCULLY said.

The Biblical Job could hardly have any more physical problems than Job McCULLY has gone through in his young life.

At age four, McCULLY was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and told that he had less than a 10 percent change of survival without a bone marrow transplant. This was the beginning of a battle for his life that has brought many crises and recoveries over the years.

He received an unrelated cord blood bone marrow transplant in October 2002 at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio, TZ. He reacted to the medicine Cyclosporine that he was being given to prevent graft vs. host disease that caused a crisis.

A few months later he came down with respiratory syncytial virus pneumonia. In December 2003, he was diagnosed with bronchiolotis obliterans, as serious a diganosis as the leukemia.

In February 20206 he was diagnosed with cataracts from all the steroids being used by his lungs were not strong enough to handle the anesthesia required for surgery.

Then in April 2006 he tested positive for a fungus infection in his lungs called asperfillus. Medicine seemed to take care of the fungus, but his lungs were losing their ability to function.

In February 2007 he went into respiratory failure and was hospitalized in several hospitals. Six months from the time he was placed on the list for a lung transplant, he received the transplant in December 2007.

After the transplant he has suffered with histoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus and adenovirus. He is not diabetic and struggles physically due to spending a year of his life in bed.

It was a year after his lung hospitalization in March 2008 that he finally returned home from the hospital.

He currently shows no sign of rejection of the lung transplant and has been allowed to go back to school when not being checked from time to time with hospitalizations.

Along the way, Job has "died" four times only to battle back and recover, his grandfather says.

He gives himself his own injections, eats his "bucket full" of pills routinely and has a surprisingly optimistic outlook on life for what the 10-year-old has been through.

"Quitting is just not in his vocabulary," McCULLY said.

The McCULLY home story for Jack WILSON, owner of Woodhaven Homes, Inc. of Sherwood, AR began with a phone call her received while drivng back from Stone county, AR.

On the line was Conrad RICKET, a producer from Extreme Makeover Home Edition, asking if WILSON would be interested in helping with a project in the central Arkansas area.

"I told him I'd be willing to talk more about the possibilities," WILSON said.

WILSON was sent a DVD telling the story of the McCULLYS, Job's long battle with illness and his needs.

He talked the project over with some of the key people he would need to help from other firms and called back to say his firm was willing to commit to the effort. It wasn't hard to find the volunteers to help once the word went out, WILSON said.

There were 500 to 600 people who helped with the actual construction and another 1,400 or so who helped in support roles for the project.

"We had great support from contractors from all over central Arkansas as a whole," WILSON said.

The big thing on a project like this is to get everything organized so the work can happen so quickly. The home is built in a week's time, but that includes time for tearing down the old building, preparing the site and then having time at the end of the build for the decorating of the interior.

"We really have a maximum of 106 hours or 4 1/2 days to get the building done but we were able to finish in 98 hours," WILSON said.

It's quite an achievement to take what would normally take six months to accomplish and do it in just a few hours.

"It's like doing 45 days of normal work every day," WILSON said. "It's quite an achievement when everything comes together because you don't have the ability to put things off because of weather or other problems."

WILSON said that having the benefit of having built more than 2,000 homes before gave him a leg up on the Extreme Makeover people who have 16 to 18 homes in their past. With the experience of other contractors he had worked with, they were able to know that certain crews could do a better job working together rather than being split with other workers, for example.

"We had less people working in specialized fields than they thought would be needed and finished the work quicker," he said.

A lot of planning in meetings ahead of time helped the coordination needed for such a quick build.

"The weather almost got us," WILSON noted. They needed to do a concrete pour for the driveway and other outside areas and bad weather was forecast to move in.

He found a concrete crew that had worked all day but were willing to come on to the work site that night to get the concrete poured ahead of the rain storm.

"It was our last chance to get that done and they responded so we could move ahead," WILSON said.

The home has about 3,200 square feet of headed and cooled area and some 4,400 under roof including porches and the garage, WILSON noted.

"Helping the McCULLY family have a new home was a great experience and is one that I am proud to have been a part of," WILSON said.

There are still some minor touch up items needed as in any construction project, and a check list of those is being completed.

The relationship that Bob McCULLY has developed with Jack WILSON isn't ending with the television show production, however. McCULLY has invited WILSON and some of his family and friends to come to Iowa for a turkey hunt later this fall. There may be more connection yet between southern Iowa and a story in central Arkansas.

Transcriptions by Sharon R. Becker, July of 2012