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Eight-year-old Derek Barclay came home from school Friday afternoon and asked his mother, Sonya Barclay, why there was a tractor-trailer sitting in the front yard of their property along the Bennoch Road in Old Town, where the family now lives in a trailer.
Derek’s reaction to Sonya’s explanation, she said, was priceless.
“His eyes just got as big as saucers,” Sonya Barclay said. “He said, ‘are you kidding me?'”
It’s no joke, as Sonya found out Friday morning. Her dying wish – the 35-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and the disease has spread to her bones, liver and part of her lungs – is coming true.
The Barclay family is getting a new house, the prospect of which left Sonya speechless Friday afternoon.
“It’s just phenomenal,” she said. “I don’t know what to say. I am at a loss for words. All I know is, I have three days to get out of my house.”
Friends will help the family pack and move Sunday to a donated trailer that will serve as a temporary home. The move is the reason for the tractor-trailer in the family’s yard.
Their current trailer will be torn down Monday, although Sonya won’t see that happen because she is scheduled to have fluid drained from her lungs. Their new home will be built on the same property.
Construction is scheduled to start a week from Monday, although materials such as lumber and insulation are still desperately needed. Three weeks later, if everything goes according to plan, the Barclay family, which also includes her husband, Jeff Barclay, three daughters, and a family dog, could be in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house.
Sonya had trouble putting her feelings into words Friday, but in an interview Thursday said she was overwhelmed by the support her family has received from the community.
“It’s inspiring. It’s a wonderful thought that all these people I don’t even know are coming out, donating time, services, this and that,” Sonya said, crying a little as Jeff rubbed her back. “It’s incredible that a community can come together like this for a family.”
Brandi Folsom, one of three friends of Sonya’s who helped spearhead the effort both to find a new house and raise funds for the family, said several businesses have come forward to provide supplies and funds.
The fundraising effort started with a trio of Barclay’s friends – Old Town residents Folsom, Lane Phillips and Jen Dudley of Winterport. They were the ones to whom Barclay expressed her dying wish – a new home for Jeff, Derek, 10-year-old daughter Logan Leonard, 5-year-old Madyson and MacKenzie, who is turning 4.
It’s a big bunch, and they need a bigger home than their current trailer, which Jeff estimates is 70 or 80 years old.
That’s not the only reason the Barclays were hoping for a new house.
The frame of the trailer has buckled and shifted because one of the additions put on over the years was installed incorrectly. Sonya said she has noticed the kitchen counters coming away from the walls.
An even bigger concern is the mold in the crawlspace beneath the trailer, which Jeff and Sonya believe has circulated in the trailer. They have noticed that the kids sneeze and cough more often inside the house than in other buildings. A visitor to the home Thursday also sneezed while sitting in the kitchen.
The Barclays would be happy with another trailer, as long as it’s a healthy environment for their family.
“I just want a home that my children are safe and secure in, and if I was to leave this earth, that my husband and my kids are safe,” Sonya said. “I don’t care if it’s a double-wide, or what it is. As long as it’s healthy, safe and secure.”
It should be all of those things, thanks to Dudley, Folsom and Phillips. The women have organized a June 13 spaghetti supper for the Barclay family. A May 17 benefit yard sale is in the works. Dudley said more than $5,000 in donations has come since a story about the Barclays appeared on a local television news broadcast.
“It’s been overwhelming, amazing,” Phillips said. “When Jen and I talked, we were just hoping for an outpouring of support. We thought we would have to go door-to-door, but everybody’s come to us.”
When Sonya got sick, she said, the three women tried different methods of getting the family a house. They contacted “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” a reality television show in which a deserving family is surprised with a new dream home, but a family in Milbridge was chosen instead.
For Sonya, the house is an important part of her fight against cancer. She would love to see her children graduate from high school, even though she has been through six rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries and experimental drug trials.
“If it was me and Jeff, him and I, it would be OK if the Lord wanted to take me home at that point in time,” she said. “But I have kids to be down here. … There are days when I just sit down and cry. There are days when I say, I don’t want to be here. But then when I look at my kids, that all goes away.”
The spaghetti supper will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 13, at Old Town Elementary School. The yard sale will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 17, on a lot next to the Dairy Queen on Stillwater Avenue in Old Town.
To make general donations, contact Jen Dudley at 223-4878.
To donate items to the yard sale, call 299-2144 or 356-4165.
jbloch@bangordailynews.net
990-8287
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