Sleep in Heavenly Peace serves hundreds of children each year
Cars lined each side of the narrow country lane. Parked along the wide-open spaces they stood out, serving as locating markers outside a sprawling Logan Ranch Road property. In the distance, buzzing sounds broke the Saturday morning silence. Even from a football field away, it sounded like the world’s busiest beehive.
The buzzing grew louder the closer one came to its source. These were worker bees – about 35 of them – inside a stand-alone structure with metal walls and a concrete floor. The steady hum came from electric hand-held sanders. Volunteers worked them back and forth, smoothing out 2-by-6 pieces of pine. Shade, inside the big barn, provided some relief amid sawdust and sweat. A breeze drifting in offered a little more.
Despite what the calendar claimed, fall was but a rumor. Flushed red in the heat but undeterred, these were the men, women and children of Georgetown’s Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit that builds beds, free of charge, for children who have none.
“No kid sleeps on the floor in our town!” said Evelyn Petrere of Georgetown, pointing out the motto on red T-shirts several volunteers wore. “It’s all about getting kids off the floor.”
Meeting a need
Everyone and everything has an origin story. Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s, as told by Ben Lake and Barbara Pearce, goes like this.
In 2013, an Idaho man learned a family living in his neighborhood did not have a bed for their child, said Mr. Lake, who is among the leaders for Georgetown’s Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter.
“He built one for them in his garage and gave it to them. It grew in his community and other communities said we want to get into that, too,” Mr. Lake said.
From that simple beginning, Sleep in Heavenly Peace has grown to 350 chapters. Most of them are in the U.S., with a few also in Canada.
Texas is home to two dozen chapters, with Ron Shelly founding Georgetown’s in 2018 after he saw the nonprofit publicized on a TV show called Returning the Favor.
“For years, before and after I retired from Texas Instruments, I prayed about finding an activity where I could give back to my community, centered on children, if possible,” Mr. Shelly said.
“He is a get-it-done type of person,” said Ms. Pearce, a retired nurse and former Georgetown City Councilmember who serves on Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s board of directors, also known as the “leadership team.”
“Within a few months [Mr. Shelly] had recruited some founding members,” Ms. Pearce explained. “He is passionate about this. After building beds and making some deliveries, all of us were also passionate.”
Since September 2019, the Georgetown chapter has built and distributed 310 beds to families all across Williamson County. The wood-framed, twin beds — which can also be made into bunk beds — come with a frame, headboard, mattress, bedding and pillows.
“It’s completely free of charge,” Mr. Lake said. “No financial requirement.”
Business partners help out
Covid shut both building and delivery down for some eight months. Currently, the Georgetown chapter organizes about six builds per year. They still take place on that Logan Ranch Road property Mr. Shelly owned, even though about two years ago he moved to Boerne.
Mr. Lake praised the new property owners, who still let them use the barn for building beds, as well as the local Mattress Firm store.
“They sell us mattresses at cost and have been doing so for a number of years,” he said, noting each bed costs about $250 to make. Construction teams, working in assembly-line fashion, can on any given Saturday build about 25 beds in four hours.
Those six annual construction days include what Mr. Lake described as “group builds,” sometimes corporate sponsored, with the participating group supplying money and manpower. He said David Weekley Homes has done this for several years.
“It’s been an interesting journey, Ms. Pearce said. “I have been on the board since the beginning and served in the role of communicating to local nonprofits how to refer families to apply for beds.”
“There is a brief vetting process to verify the address and how many beds – more logistical questions than any sort of pass/fail,” Mr. Lake said.
Mr. Lake said economic circumstances can lead families to situations where their kids don’t have a bed.
“If I had to pick a number-one reason it would be a move,” he said. “They are coming to the area and trying to get on their feet. We do see some immigrant families.
“What we’ll see is siblings sharing a bed, or sleeping with a parent, or on a sofa or air mattress. Having that twin-bed space they can call their own, where they can read a book or get a good night’s rest, we think is so important for their well-being.
“We always have a backlog,” Mr. Lake continued. “Sometimes it’s only 3-4 beds [needed]. Sometimes it’s 30 to 40 we are unable to supply with our current financial and volunteer base.”
Ms. Pearce said the group needs to increase its delivery teams.
“It’s amazing how many families don’t have beds,” she said.
By the end of 2024, Mr. Lake predicts that the Georgetown chapter will have built and donated a total of 350 beds since 2019.
“If it weren’t for Covid it would be a lot higher,” he said.
‘It’s like Christmas’
On those bed-building Saturday mornings, everybody has a job and knows how to do it.
First, one small team of volunteers arrives to cut the lumber. Then others take over, sanding, staining and assembling.
“This is not fine woodworking,” Mr. Lake noted. “If you can hold a sander or a drill or a paint brush you can help out.”
While Mr. Lake was sanding, Linda Callaway of Georgetown was part of a three-woman team getting bed slats ready for the delivery team.
“We wrap it for when they get out to the job site,” she said.
Meanwhile Bill Booth – who’s also on the Sleep in Heavenly Peace leadership team – was preparing bed frame slats to have holes drilled in them.
“We’ve probably done 100 [beds] this year and will probably do another 50,” he said.
Young men – some from Meridian World School in Round Rock and at least one home-schooler – were dipping their almost-finished products into a tank containing vinegar and dissolved steel wool. This was for staining. Mr. Lake said they use vinegar because it’s much-less expensive than commercial staining products.
“We literally dip the wood in large tanks of vinegar for 30 seconds and pull it out and air dry it,” he explained.
Wearing an apron and rubber gloves Georgetown’s Astin Carrillo, age 12, was asked if he has his own bed to sleep in.
“Yes, sir,” he enthusiastically replied. “I want to help kids who don’t have beds.”
“It might be one family getting four beds,” Mr. Lake said September 21, anticipating the following Saturday’s deliveries. “It might be three families getting one bed each.”
“It’s thrilling, seeing kids get these beds,” volunteer Chuck Rohre said. “It’s like Christmas for them.”
Jarrell family gets bunk beds
Rancho del Cielo sits little more than a mile off Ronald Reagan Boulevard, so it might be no coincidence the new Jarrell subdivision shares a name with the late President’s California ranch.
A sign near the entrance advertises homes starting at $200,000. Several houses are still under construction. Most of those already built have front yards with slender young oak trees tied between t-posts for support.
Rebecca Pola has two of these trees in her yard, leading to her new two-story house, and on September 28 she waited for Sleep in Heavenly Peace volunteers to deliver a pair of bunk beds; one for the boys and another for the girls.
“We just moved here,” Ms. Pola, 25, said. At 8, Angeleana is the oldest of her four children. Younger daughter Gianna is 3. The boys are Joseph and Benjamin, ages 5 and 4, respectively.
Ms. Pola and her children moved from Lockhart to Jarrell about one month ago. She works in home-health care. A sister, Mellisha, and her children live here too.
So, as Saturday groceries got unloaded and snacks eaten, it was a busy place about to get busier. Kids ran around, Inside Out 2 played on the TV, and Sleep in Heavenly Peace was on its way with a pair of bunk beds.
Volunteer Myra Page arrived first.
“I helped them deliver Wednesday and Friday,” she said. “We’ve got [this] one today and this coming Monday we have two in Round Rock.”
It takes, as the saying goes, a village. Ms. Page said the 130-member Georgetown Rotary Club – the one that meets at First United Methodist Church – supports Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
“We are a service organization,” she said. “We try not just to hand out money. We try to participate.”
Additionally, Women Helping Others – the WHO Ladies of Sun City – recently donated 50 sets of bedding and pillows. Some of that, sheets with dinosaurs and unicorns and other colorful designs kids like, would find its way to the Pola family in Jarrell today.
Ed and Evelyn Petrere arrived together. John Ethridge, from St. Vincent de Paul at St. Helen Catholic Church, joined them. The four-member team was complete and got to work. As with the bed-building project in Georgetown, one week before, they proceeded with friendly efficiency.
Ms. Pola directed the crew to a pair of upstairs bedrooms and assembly began. It was all a matter of putting together the pre-cut, pre-stained frames, headboards, bed rails and mattress slats.
Wooden dowels were placed in holes that had been drilled into the bed frames. This allowed the volunteers to stack one twin bed on top of another, in each room, completing the bunk bed assembly process.
The whole effort took no more than 90 minutes. There were smiles and thank-yous, handshakes and hugs. Then the volunteers were out the door. Once outside, they paused by their cars, still smiling in appreciation for how well it had all gone.
Earlier, one of them had told 8-year-old Angeleana the “SHP” initials set into the headboard of her new bed stand for “Sleep in Heavenly Peace.”
Angeleana examined the letters, running her fingers over them. She repeated the words, sounding them out: “Sleep in Heavenly Peace.”
Then, grinning from ear to ear, Angeleana stretched out on her new bed.
About Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Origins: Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s Georgetown chapter was established in 2018-2019 by founding members that included the Ron Shelly family, Bill and Becky Booth, Bill and Donna Connor, Don and Patty Hewlett, and Jim and Lavonne Mills. The initial leadership team also included Ben Lake, Barbara Pearce, Rev. Ron Swain and Marissa Austin. It is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, with all donations tax exempt.
Volunteer: Sleep in Heavenly Peace is an all-volunteer organization. People are needed to participate in building days, the delivery of beds and conducting bedding drives. No experience is needed and all volunteers will be trained. Contact Ben Lake at ben.lake@shpbeds.org
Request a Bed: Beds can be provided for kids 3 to 17, who are sleeping on the floor or in a bed-sharing situation where they need relief. All applications must be placed online through the www.shpbeds.org website. For more information email Ben Lake at ben.lake@shpbeds.org
To Learn More: Visit Facebook.com sleep in heavenly peace/georgetown