With money she inherited from her father, Cherie Gouthro started shopping for her first house at the age of 46. The single mother of five found one in Beverly, an old farmhouse with some charm and lots of problems.
She decided to keep looking. Her sister, as sisters often do, provided the reality check. A real estate agent, she showed Gouthro the only other property she could afford — a mobile home in a park off Route 1 in Peabody.
"This is your price range," she told Gouthro.
So she went back to Beverly, to the house with "potential," as she kept telling herself, and made an offer.
She began by scraping away the chipping clapboard. She painted the front a pretty caramel color with dark red trim. She put up two wooden window boxes and filled them with flowers.
Then she ran out of money — and time. One month after Gouthro bought her house on Cabot Street, she started law school. It had been a dream of hers, she says, ever since she filed her own malpractice suit after her son's breach birth left him with a brain injury. A judge reviewing the case told her, "This is top-notch legal work."
The 50-year-old graduated from law school in June. And for the first time, she started to feel embarrassed about the shape of her house.
"If someone drives by, I didn't want them thinking, "What kind of attorney could she be?" Gouthro says.
Her worries vanished, practically overnight.
Over the course of two days last month, close to 100 volunteers from Electric Insurance Co. in Beverly showed up in yellow T-shirts to complete an outdoor makeover.
From sunup to sundown, they worked.
They dug up her backyard, spread loam and put down three pallets worth of new sod. They planted flowers and bushes. They spread 20 yards of mulch. They built a meandering stone walkway that led to a new kidney-shaped wood . They bought her a two-person swing and a new screen door. They paved her mud pit of a driveway.
And they painted the house — all four sides, the beautiful caramel color she had picked out some four years earlier.
"It still doesn't feel real to me," Gouthro says, "that this is my house."
Bob Lessard, a claims manager at Electric Insurance, headed up the volunteer effort. This is the second year the company has chosen to help out a homeowner in Beverly struggling to keep up.
He interviewed Gouthro after she was referred for the makeover by Wellspring House in Gloucester. Gouthro had help paying for college and law school through the nonprofit's One Family Scholar program.
"We saw this as a great opportunity to help someone trying to help themselves," Lessard says.
The company gives employees eight hours of paid time every year to do community service. Lessard came to the house to take measurements and sketched out the plans for the yard using PowerPoint. "We kind of shoot for the stars and then say, 'How do we make this happen?'"
Zampell Building Services, the property manager for Electric Insurance's corporate office, donated money, equipment and manpower. Volunteers can spread mulch, but they can't drive Bobcats.
On the two-day makeover, Lessard would not let Gouthro work. She kept busy in the kitchen making peanut butter cookies for the volunteers and walking around her yard with a look of complete joy and total disbelief.
Today, on the Fourth of July, she is hosting a barbecue in her new backyard with 40 people to celebrate her recent graduation from law school and the fact that she has grass where brambles once grew. They will sit on the deck, gather around the fire pit and maybe catch a glimpse of one of the hummingbirds drawn to the nectar at the feeder.
"It is absolutely magical out there," Gouthro says.
Staff writer Susan Flynn can be reached at sflynn@salemnews.com or by calling 978-338-2658.
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