Repost from the Montgomery Advertiser:  This holiday season, one local military veteran is being given “the best Christmas” of his life. Navy veteran, Moses Hardaway and his wife Elizabeth Hardaway are receiving much needed renovations to their Pike Road home from Home Depot employees and community volunteers to make the couple’s home fit for Christmas visitors. The Hardaways are very grateful for all those who have come out to help this week. The team of about a dozen folks started demolition and renovation to the home Tuesday and were scheduled to work through Friday. Hardaway joined the Army in 1953 and served six years. He was born and raised in Montgomery County and has been in living in the Pike Road community since 1976. He’s overwhelmed by the community’s response to help him and his wife.

“This is the best year of my life, the best Christmas of my life and I want to thank Home Depot and Pike Road community. It’s truly a blessing,” Hardaway said.

Home Depot volunteers and the Town of Pike Road team up ever year to give back to local veterans. The partnership is part of The Home Depot’s fourth annual Celebration of Service campaign where the store’s team volunteers labor and materials to transform more than 1,000 homes and facilities for veterans across the country. Home Depot’s volunteer team captain, Bobby Mathis, said the Hardaway’s home was selected based on need. Mathis, an Army veteran himself, retired from the military in 1996 as a lieutenant colonel and said he was overwhelmed to help a fellow soldier. “I can’t express how grateful I am to be helping another veteran,” Mathis said. “I didn’t know him until we got here and he’s a great, great, guy.”

All materials were donated by Home Depot and total costs for the project equaled $8,500 provided through a grant from Home Depot headquarters. So far renovations made to the Hardaways’ bathrooms include new toilets and vanities, new light fixtures, fresh paint and remote controlled ceiling fans. Other renovations will include a refinished bathtub, new carpet and floor tiles, paneling in the den, new doors and window blinds and a new kitchen sink. Also, new shutters will be attached to the outside windows along with gutters and rain spouts. The renovations will make the home more handicap accessible, especially in both the bathrooms, Mathis said. Not only will the much needed renovations make their home more presentable for guests, but it will also help make life for 81-year-old Hardaway a little easier. He suffers from several medical conditions including diabetes and dialysis, his wife said. “It will make our lives so much easier,” Elizabeth Hardaway said. “With all our medical expenses, we haven’t been able to get some of the renovations done and they’re doing it for us and that’s a great help.” The remote control ceiling fans will be a huge help, Elizabeth Hardaway said, because her husband has a difficult time pulling the chain down to adjust the light or fan speed. “For some things it was time for them to be repaired and they couldn’t have come at a better time,” Hardaway said.

The local Home Depot store and Pike Road have teamed up before to build a pavilion at the Veterans Memorial there and build a community ball field at Veterans Park, according to Gordon Stone, mayor of Pike Road. “To see citizens utilizing those facilities and to see the smiles of appreciation for the work … and to see veterans come up to me and thank me for doing this, that’s the true measure of success,” Stone said. “I met with the Hardaways and after chatting with them there could not be more grateful and more gracious recipients.” The Home Depot, in partnership with The Home Depot Foundation, helps improved the homes and lives of U.S. military veterans and their families through aiding communities and helping them apply for grants. Since 2011, the foundation has invested more than $80 million to provide safe housing to veterans, and along with the help of Team Depot volunteers, has transformed more than 12,000 homes for veterans.