Extreme Makeover for Spc. Patrick Tutwiller after Iraq and tornado

Makeover: Stars descend on community
Carla Strand
City-County Editor
Thursday, Nov 20, 2008

CHAPMAN -- Before a crowd of thousands of people and with TV cameras rolling, the Patrick Tutwiler family was introduced to their new home built by volunteers working with the television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Many of those thousands waited four to five hours through a sunny, chilly and often breezy Tuesday, after e-mail messages sent out by the show Monday night stated the family would be home early to avoid the potential for bad weather late Tuesday.

Joy Burton, who teaches grades 1-8 at the Enterprise Academy, said students from the school attended about two hours of classes Tuesday morning before buses headed to Chapman to watch events unfold.

“This is a once in a lifetime experience,” she said. “There are some things you can’t teach them about. They have to see it for themselves.”

Spc. Tutwiler, who joined the Army following 9/11, was wounded in the neck by a sniper’s bullet while serving in Iraq in 2007, and was back home in Chapman recovering from a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, when the tornado occurred.

Within a matter of months, the family would have been forced to leave after Tutwiler is medically discharged from the Army.

“It was fitting that we named a veteran on Veteran’s Day to receive a home,” said Diane Korman, senior producer, Lock and Key Productions, which produces “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
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