Brother Joe

On a hot and sticky Saturday morning, Brother Joe Steen gets a carpenter’s hammer for a volunteer out of one of the many toolboxes in the bed of his red pickup truck.

“Now, you need to remember this,” he says, still holding the hammer, a glint in his eyes. “Hit the nail, not your thumb.”

Mixing humor with ministry is Brother Joe’s cheerful style, gleaned from serving nearly 30 years as a religious brother for the Glenmary Home Missioners, a Catholic society founded in 1939 to provide assistance—spiritual and material—to the rural poor in the Southeastern United States.

Over the last three years, he has served as the project manager for Habitat for Humanity in Pontotoc County, a lovely patch of gently rolling hills and farmland in northeastern Mississippi near Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Habitat for Humanity—a volunteer organization championed by former President Jimmy Carter—has emerged as one of the nation’s success stories, offering people a “hand up” instead of a handout in the desire to own their own homes.

Today, more than a dozen workers have gathered at the property of Brad Fowler, a single father of three who works for the Mississippi Department of Transportation. His one-story Habitat house is standing, roofed, and ready for siding.

As the day wears on, Brother Joe offers some guidance to volunteers installing the house’s plastic siding. Unfortunately, it’s upside-down.

“This material’s pretty forgiving,” Brother Joe says. “It’s pliable, and it’s easy for volunteers to work with. Even them.” He laughs, pointing at youthful crew members who are fixing the mistake.

Humble to a fault, Brother Joe, a lanky Irish-American from Chicago, is always eager to apply his skills as a master carpenter, a trade he learned before joining Glenmary.

“Brother Joe is a real asset to us down here,” says the Rev. Kenneth Corley, pastor of Pontotoc Methodist Church and a regular Habitat volunteer. “He really is the Habitat program for us. Without him, I don’t think we’d be able to build the houses that we have.”

Indeed, when Brother Joe arrived in Mississippi in 1997, the Habitat program in Pontotoc County was floundering. Seeing an opportunity to open his toolbox and reach out to the community, he quickly worked to move low-income families out of dilapidated trailers and into modest frame houses.

Fowler, who is having his new house built on property he already owns, will pay a modest monthly mortgage. His down payment is 500 hours of “sweat equity,” whereby he or family members will help volunteers construct the house. The Habitat organization, chartered county-by-county across America, signs a co-mortgage with the homeowner and guarantees the house will be paid for.

“It’s a very important program that does no end of good,” Brother Joe explains. “It is, for me, an expression of my own ministry of social concern. It’s something, too, that I love to do.”

Brother Joe first became involved in programs like Pontotoc’s Habitat operation when he worked with an organization called People’s Self-Help Housing in Vanceburg, Ky., where he spent much of his early Glenmary career. From that experience and working in Kentucky with another Habitat program, Brother Joe learned to love the dual nature of the volunteer program. And many people have learned they can depend on him.

“He’s a great guy,” says Pontotoc Habitat for Humanity board member Bill Jackson, a retired rural-electric cooperative manager. “There’s no question that he has been the one that has helped make Habitat work and grow here. He’s a pleasure to work with.”

At the end of the day, when the last volunteer has departed the worksite, Brother Joe assesses the progress on Brad Fowler’s house.

“Looks pretty good,” he says, smiling. “We’ll have this one done in no time now. Then we can start all over again.”

Freelance writer Dennis O’Connor and his family worked with Brother Joe on the Fowler Habitat house last summer.

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