News of boy’s brain tumor stirs volunteers to fix up house

PARMA, Idaho – The philanthropic project that’s been occupying the days and nights of Rhonda Price-Tucker started with a complaint.

She knew something was amiss with the Driskell family, who live next door to her in Parma. The family’s yard was becoming overgrown, and the dogs were being left for long periods of time. Price-Tucker spoke with the mayor, another neighbor. The mayor spoke to police Chief Albert Erickson.

Pretty soon, details emerged. Gage Driskell, 8, who lives with his dad, Jake, and older brother, Trevor, was in the hospital. In March, he had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and his dad was spending most of his time at the hospital in Boise. Trevor, 11, was staying with family.

So just before Memorial Day, Erickson gathered an ad hoc crew to clean up the family’s yard. After speaking with Gage’s grandmother, who was trying to clean the house, Erickson realized the scale of the problems – leaking faucets, mold, broken windows, exposed wiring – was beyond the reach of a few good Samaritans.

He went to bed that night worried about what to do for the Driskells. The next morning, he woke up earlier than usual and wrote a three-page letter. He sent it to everyone he knew and anyone he could think of.

“I sent it to the Lions Club,” Erickson said. “And they sent it to everybody.”

He and Price-Tucker became the center of a high-speed, communitywide, dawn-to-dark effort to get the Driskell house ready for Gage’s return next week. He will be in a wheelchair and faces a year of chemotherapy.

Price-Tucker and her husband, Dave Tucker, spend most of their year as fly-fishing guides. But they’re not working at the moment because rivers are too high for fishing. So she’s been running the electronic “nerve center” of the effort from her house, maintaining a website and Facebook page devoted to Gage, setting up a bank account ($4,200 has come in so far), fielding donations, marshaling volunteers and setting up raffles and special events.

“My husband knows construction,” she said, “and I know how to organize people.”

Those people have come from Parma – an agricultural community of 1,300 near the Oregon border – and beyond. They’ve given time and materials to rebuild the Driskell house from the core.

That includes widening doorways to accommodate Gage’s wheelchair, and installing windows, appliances and landscaping.

Builders have stripped walls to the lath. Plumbers and electricians are donating their time. Volunteers packed the family’s belongings, which are being kept in donated storage units during the project. The city is boarding the family’s two dogs.

“Whether you believe in God, or just that there are good people, whatever it is, it’s in Parma,” said Erickson. Most of the people who have come forward to help do not have a personal connection to the family, he said.

Gage will have a therapeutic whirlpool tub – a Habitat for Humanity employee and Parma Fire Chief James Cook split the bill.

Smaller donations have come, too, including coins from the piggy banks of several area children.

Gage’s dad, Jake Driskell, who works with his father at their fencing company, has spent just five nights in Parma since Gage was admitted to the hospital on March 10.

He said he’s been amazed by what’s happened at the 1928 home he calls a “bachelor pad.”

“I am just completely overwhelmed with joy about what the community’s doing for Gage,” he said.