A Peoria veteran is thankful for a surprise new roof gifted to him by a Creve Coeur home improvement contractor this morning.
Perfect Choice Home Solutions partnered with IKO Roofing Contractors, Richards Building Supply and Daker Seamless Gutters for the Tuesday repair. The roof replacement was the first time Perfect Choice had done renovation work for a veteran since it had replaced the windows for a veteran a few years ago. This time, the recipient was Vietnam War veteran Wallace Williams of Peoria.
A tree fell on Williams’ house once, and while insurance covered a lot of the repair, it missed some spots, said Williams. Williams repaired those areas himself, but he has known for a decade that the roof was “dangerously bad.”
Williams receives disability benefits from the military, which are based on his post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], but he did not know where he would get tens of thousands of dollars to replace his roof and gutters.
The opportunity was “special no matter who got chosen,” said Williams, but he was thankful to Perfect Choice for doing the repairs for him.
“All thanks go to the company that’s doing this type of thing, and to all the workers, everyone that’s involved,” Williams said. “May blessings be upon them. This is truly a blessing.”
The work is expected to take one to two days, with crews onsite Nov. 10-12.
Besides serving, Williams also worked as a photographer at Bradley University for a time. He said he even auditioned for a part in Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, a 1986 semi-autobiographical film starring, directed and co-written by, and about Peoria-born comedian and actor Richard Pryor. The film was shot partially in Peoria.
Perfect Choice Marketing Manager Cody Emmons said the company had been thinking for a while about doing something for the VFW, the American Legion or another veteran organization before settling on home repair for a veteran.
Prepping for the work since June, Perfect Choice asked the community to submit nominations for homeowners in need of roof repair.
A selection committee factored in veterans’ stories and their service in making its final choice. The committee narrowed down 35 candidates from across five Central Illinois counties — Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Fulton and Mason — to a top five before Williams was finally picked.
“It’s weird,” said Emmons. “Insurance companies sometimes don’t fully cover [roof replacement], but they have to force you to get it replaced so that [the homeowner] can keep their coverage. What we found was there’s a lot of insurances that aren’t covering roof replacements for whatever reason. So, we kind of added that into what product of ours we decided to go with.”
Redoing a roof is also a little easier to coordinate, said Emmons. It required less customization and in-person measuring compared to windows and allowed Perfect Choice to keep the surprise for Williams until Tuesday morning.
Perfect Choice also worked with Williams’ daughter to help plan and to make sure Williams’ PTSD was accommodated when it came to the workers and the loud noises that would go on during the roof repair. Emmons said Williams’ new roof should be good for 30 years.
Emmons hopes to do this or something similar again for other veterans.
“It’s nice to be able to help people,” said Emmons. “Wish we could help a lot more, but I think we’ll keep it a yearly tradition.”
