One minute Tom Dexter was pulling up a board in the 300-year-old house he was deconstructing, and the next he was lying on his back, one floor down, with a broken vertebra.

That traumatic incident gave way to a generous, unexpected and unsolicited outpouring from friends and neighbors who helped him finish the job.

“Three or four days a week the neighbors were working on the house without being asked. They all just showed up,” said Dexter.

Dexter, a native of Marion, was in the process of taking apart a house on Delano Road that had been in his family for 100 years and seen the birth of his grandfather.

The house was eventually sold out of the family, and when a new house was set to be built on the property (next door to Dexter’s home) he asked the owners if he could purchase it from them.

Dexter had the house moved to his property with the hopes of restoring it and adding the 2,000 square foot structure onto the home he shares with his wife, Susan. After assessing the cost and time that would be required, however, he decided to dismantle the house and save the beams and boards that he could for a small addition.

Dexter, an energy auditor for large facilities, had wanted to own the house for as long as he could remember.

“I used to tell my grandparents someday I’m going to buy that house and get it back in the family,” he recalled.

Taking it down was a hard decision.

“The cost to have restored it would have been twice what the house was worth,” Dexter said. “I really wanted to save that house. I was in love with that house.”

A few friends had helped with the deconstruction before Dexter slipped and fell on wet floorboards Oct. 4, but he never asked anyone to help him complete the project.

Childhood friend Richard Bonnar was one of several who showed up with tools in hand.

“I knew Tom ever since I was born, essentially. We’ve known each other for 65 years,” he said.

Bonnar was helping Dexter the day he fell.

“I heard a thud. He was a few feet away from me on the floor,” he said.

After the accident, Bonnar said he thought of something Tom’s grandmother had said to him long ago.

“One of her parting words to me years ago was, ‘Take care of each other.’ And I said I would and he said he would,” Bonnar remembered.

The thought inspired him to head back to the house. Others did the same.

“Sometimes people would look out the window and see somebody working, and they would come over with a crowbar or a hammer,” said Bonnar. “We never called anybody. People just showed up.”

The group included neighbors, friends and Masons and varied from two or three people to eight or nine each day over the course of about two weeks.

“Neighbors came out of the woodwork, so to speak, and saved the woodwork," said Bonnar. “It was really interesting because they’re all people with Medicare cards, basically, and advanced degrees."

Most had no background in construction or deconstruction.

“I’m seeing a professor of calculus at UMass Dartmouth and an MIT PhD engineer and a PhD in psychology and an engineer in hardware and software in computers all discussing the best way to pack a dumpster,” he said. “I thought it was hysterical. We had a grand time.”

Bob and Betty Shaw  helped out, taking pictures of the whole process, working on the house and collecting donations to pay for two dumpsters.

“Everybody loves Tom,” said Betty. “They were happy to do anything they could to help him. The news in the world has been so bad lately, [this] was something positive they could do.”

On Oct. 19, the neighbors and friends completed the house except for the chimney, which another friend took down for Dexter.

What’s left is enough boards for a small room and a community that has learned something about itself.

“The whole process and the whole thing was very healing and very gratifying,"
said Bonnar. “I think people felt, too, that if they fell the neighborhood would come out. It was really rewarding on lots of levels.”

That goes doubly for Dexter, who is recovering from surgery but able to walk around.

“I just couldn’t believe it. I was overwhelmed emotionally when it all started happening.”