01:05
Jim Pate Highlight
It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican-none of that stuff matters. We can all agree on one thing and that's that everybody ought to have a decent place to live.
About Jim
- Calls New Orleans the most interesting city in America-no matter what your background is, everyone has a place in New Orleans.
- Growing up, he expected he'd go into a more "traditional" profession like his parents, have a nuclear family.
- Studied and practiced law-started to resent the "us vs. them" mentality; lawyers were pursuing money rather than justice.
- Says the greatest part about Habitat for Humanity is that there's no one there who resents it; everyone there wants to be there.
- He left law, found Habitat through his church, where he'd been running a soup kitchen.
- Started as a "house leader" volunteer in 1984; says he caught "infectious Habit-itis."
- Seeing the families they were impacting, the areas they were rebuilding had him hooked.
- Now he's committed himself to rebuilding his favorite city, New Orleans; says little by little, the city is rising back up like a "phoenix out of the ashes."