HOLDEN — A crowd of dozens of volunteers spent the morning of Oct. 26 planting shrubs and flowers and laying down sod outside a newly built house in Holden, preparing the home for its future residents.
At the center of the festivities was Craig Brady, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and Norwood native who will soon move into the house with his family.
“This is very overwhelming, but it’s a blessing. It’s fantastic,” Brady said.
Brady lost the lower half of his right leg during combat while deployed in Afghanistan in 2010. When he learned about the Taunton-based veteran charity Homes For Our Troops, which builds accessible homes for disabled military veterans, he decided to apply to their program and was accepted.
Now, a matter of weeks before he and his family move into the fully wheelchair-accessible house in Holden, he said he was optimistic.
“The older I’m getting, it’s not always easier every day. I haven’t been able to use my wheelchair in quite some years, and my quality of life, it just makes sense to get an accessible house,” Brady said. “All the hallways are wide, the doorways are wide, the doorways are fully accessible, even the counters are lower. You can use a wheelchair anywhere.”