Windsor volunteers show up for man who helped many others

Peter Chase, right, grabs nails from a bucket April 17 while he and Emery Pierce build a railing for the ramp they volunteered to build for Bob Brann of Windsor. Brann lost the strength in his legs after a heart transplant four years ago and uses a wheelchair most of the time. Purchase this image

WINDSOR — Bob Brann, his friends say, has done just about everything in his life — building his own home, constructing post-and-beam structures for others, maintaining buildings, helping reassemble a 19th-century working sawmill at the Windsor Fairgrounds, and volunteering to help build ramps to help people with disabilities get in and out of their homes.

So when the aftereffects of a heart transplant left him relying on a walker or wheelchair to get around his Greeley Road home, he knew he needed a ramp, and he knew how to build it.

He just couldn’t build it himself.

So the 75-year-old Brann, who shares the home with his wife, Priscilla, ordered the lumber and other supplies, and reached out to some of his longtime friends.

Alan Mitchell carries a porch door up the ramp he and other volunteers are building April 17 for Bob Brann at Brann’s home in Windsor. *Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel*

A group of friends who have worked alongside Brann on any number of other volunteer projects, many of them at the local fairgrounds, stepped up for that, spending recent days building a 38-foot wheelchair ramp Brann will use to get in and out of his home.

“They’re all friends, fair people, and they kept telling me, if they could do something to help me, to let them know,” Brann said earlier this month. “They’ve been working on it … It’s looking really good. I love it. They’re doing such a good job, it’s been great.”

On a recent Thursday, Peter Chase, Greg Baker, Emery Pierce and Alan Mitchell, all of them over 70, worked together to build much of the ramp.

“I can’t go up and down stairs worth a damn, so that ramp is going to be awfully nice,” Brann said. “My wife isn’t really capable of lifting me, so she wondered if she could get me back into the house,” he had to continue to use the steps.

Bob Brann watches through a window on April 17 as volunteers Greg Baker, Peter Chase, Emery Pierce and Alan Mitchell build two ramps at Brann’s Windsor home. Brann lost some mobility following a heart transplant four years ago. *Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel*

Chase, of China, said Brann, president of the Windsor Historical Society and a lifelong Windsor resident, has given his time to work on innumerable projects in the area, including building and maintaining museum buildings at the Windsor Fairgrounds and helping build an outdoor classroom for Windsor Elementary School.

“Bob has done everything; he’s a very clever individual,” Chase said. “Bob is just the kind of guy, if he calls and needs help with something, there will be 15 guys right there.”

Baker, who lives in Pittston, said that after all the projects and volunteering Brann has done for others in the area over the years, it wasn’t hard for him to round up people to work on the ramp.

“All Bob has to do is ask and we’ll be right there to help him,” Baker said. “That guy’s volunteered a lot of time (at the fairgrounds), it’s all volunteer work.”