THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

There is something about Buffalo and the surrounding area that, despite incompetent politicians and a sagging economy, brings out the best in people. I moved here fifteen years ago and I count the locals as one of the best reasons to stay.

What began as a TV project to build a new house is turning into the transformation of a whole neighborhood.

“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” famously helps one family and one house. But since work for ABC-TV's popular show began Sunday at 228 Massachusetts Ave., thousands of volunteers, skilled and unskilled, have descended on the Lower West Side. By the end of today, organizers say, they will have worked on 50 homes, installing siding, roofs and porches, planting shrubs and applying coats of paint.

Together with volunteers who have poured concrete sidewalks, painted murals, cleaned up vacant lots and built community gardens they are changing the face of an area of several blocks long considered one of Buffalo's most hard-pressed and crime-ridden.

No doubt many people showed up hoping to get on TV but something bigger took over when they got here.

The reason why the Buffalo version of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” goes beyond a modern-day fairy tale for a lucky resident begins with David Stapleton, owner of David Homes.

“I felt it would be unconscionable for us to come here and build this one house without trying to do something to help others in the neighborhood while we're here,” said Stapleton, who quietly accepted the invitation to be the home builder Oct. 19 after producers sought him out.

Stapleton said he initially encountered “some reservations from the show” because producers first needed to be reassured the main focus wouldn't be diverted.

Stapleton praised all those involved in what he said was “the possibility of people getting together and starting to take back this neighborhood.”

“Every time I asked for volunteers, more showed up than what we asked for. Every time we asked for donations in materials to help in the community, people said yes and gave more,” he said.

After days and days of teabaggies and Stupaks and Foxsuckers and all the other god forsaken crap that has bubbled to the surface of this country, it makes me proud to know that the core of what is this country is still sound.