The article starts like this....
At a time when everyone was moving out of Detroit, they moved in.
In a world where everyone wants bigger and better, they went smaller and worse.
In a country where people often pay lip service to making a difference in their community, they actually are building a community -- one reclaimed house at a time.
Larry and Marilyn Johnson were a fairly typical white, suburban couple back in the 1990s, when they sold their computer business. They found themselves with money and time. Maybe too much time.
"I remember coming in from a golf game and Larry asking me how my game was, and I just started crying," Marilyn remembers. "I said, 'My life has no purpose.' "
So they started volunteering. They helped at shelters. They worked with treatment programs. Right away, they noticed the same faces coming back every few months -- get sober, go out, use again, come back. "It was like a reunion," Marilyn says.
The only way to stop the revolving door, they decided, was to take it off its hinges. Replace it with four walls of community.
And so they did.
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