William "D'Grouch" Laubengayer Memorial Build

Fifteen years ago, my director said to me, "You gotta meet this guy that volunteers with us. They call him The Grouch." Within ten seconds of meeting William, I knew three things: it was D'Grouch, he was extremely intelligent and very ornery, and he would be a great friend.

Losing William is one of the hardest things to think about, so I would much rather think of all the things that made him great in my eyes. There are the facts that one could rattle off from memory or find in all our records, like how he had volunteered with Habitat for 20 years. He worked on more than 100 houses. He created tools for us and donated many more. He volunteered an average of 1,100 hours with us every year. I could throw numbers at you all day, but I would rather tell you what was behind all that.

I want to tell you about William rolling up to the job site on his BMW before anyone else so he could just visit with me and see how things were going. He liked to poke fun at the world when things were tough and make sure he would get me to laugh. I want to tell you about how, as a driver of a pickup truck, he cut me no slack when I retired my truck in favor of a more fuel-efficient, bright yellow Focus. He promptly named it the "yellow piece of junk." Let me tell you how, if I was cutting material, he would always double measure what I had cut and, with a gleam in his eye, announce that I was off by at least a 64th of an inch.

He was great because he knew how to give you just the right amount of guff. He knew how to listen when you needed to vent. He knew how to just show up when you desperately needed another set of hands to keep the project rolling. I can remember him working at the first Women Build I was in charge of. He came out with his saw and proceeded to teach the ladies how to properly use a compound miter saw. His patience and encouragement was amazing. HE was amazing.

William loved to project the image of D'Grouch. He loved to grumble. He loved to make snarky, sarcastic jokes. But I know for a fact that no man was less grouchy. If you knew him, his heart was on his sleeve. His thoughts were always of those around him and those he could help. He always went out of his way to do kind things. D'Grouch was a cover, you see, and one that I was so very privileged to see through.

It doesn't do William justice to try and sum up his impact with numbers. These are the facts that I will always remember instead of those numbers: I was blessed to get to work with William for 15 of those 20+ years. I wish with all my heart that we could go on building together past those 100 houses. I will not only treasure the tools he created and donated but do my best to make sure that every volunteer who uses them knows about the great guy they came from.

As for those thousands of hours, how did they go so fast? How did they do so much? So many families safe in their own homes, so many gut laughs and slightly off-color jokes, billions of minutes of teasing, and so, so, so much serious hard work and caring mentoring, that's how. All from one guy I will always call my friend.