Let's See If We Can Help
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The Story of “Let’s See If We Can Help, Inc.’
In the late nineteen-nineties I took a course on public speaking given through my employer. I remember that during the class my instructor seemed to be very impressed and insisted that I had a story to tell and should write a book. I would go on to hear that countless times over the next two decades. I don’t know what she heard that she thought really needed to be shared, but it was nothing compared to what I would eventually have to say. Though I must admit, some of the characters are the same. This is the first time I’ve ever sat down to write my story and I am going to make it as brief as possible but keep in mind that it is a very long and intricate one. Bearing in mind that I have enough content to write a book, I’m going to try to make it just a short story for the purposes of giving the audience an overview.
The purpose of the story is only to fill in some blanks and give potential crowdfunding donors information on how I started this organization and why I feel it so important to keep it going. Let me too say that I have invested over $100,000. in cash of my own money over the last 11 years to keep it going and have never received a penny in financing. Not only is everyone a volunteer, I also have not taken a salary. I also pay for our annual fundraiser which has cost me much money but never earned any money. I've consistently put money back into it to make it bigger and better and have also started paying people who have graciously volunteered their time over the years. One day I’m sure it will profit, through necessary sponsorships, vendors and patrons. The purpose of not seeking government grants was so that we would always be able to continue our work in the community without being restricted or having our hands tied. As a successful fundraising campaign, this will enable us to serve our community in anyway that we can. That being said, it’s important that readers know our mission. Taken directly from our website, in part it reads:
Let’s See If We Can Help, Inc. is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization incorporated in 2008 whose main mission is helping to educate the general public and resolve issues involving tangled deeds and property rights. … We focus not only on the issues or problems but also the education of participants by emphasizing the importance and impact of estate planning and offering guidance as it relates to planning and the process…we also reach out to the community to provide help and sponsorship where we can…through such additional programs as our ‘Get Ready to Set Sail’ and ‘MLK Day Project’.
This has been my mission since 2008 when I started this organization. I didn’t know it then but in early 2007 my life was about to change drastically, and for months, I wouldn’t even be aware of it. During the Spring of 2007 I went to work on a Habitat project in New Orleans. I would not allow my husband, George, to go due to fear that he may get lost in the midst of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You see, he had already begun to wander off, but would find his way back, totally disheveled and argumentative because I questioned him. I would be scared to death, not knowing where he was, and each time he would show up once again looking like he had been through the wringer. When in New Orleans, I spoke with him by phone, what seems like every waking minute I was not working. He wasn’t taking care of himself as I thought he could, and the day I returned home, he went into a coma.
My husband of 17 years never allowed me into his business matters, whether his actual barbershop business (fine), or the home (bad move). I was foolish to stand for that. When he went into the coma, I found myself cleaning up his entire years’ worth of messes. I didn’t really mind because I knew I could do a much better job than he, but he just wouldn’t let me. I think he was so bad at it that he was embarrassed to let me see just how bad he was at taking care of business. Sounds good on the outside, but believe me it wasn’t. There’s just not enough time to go into it. While he was hospitalized in the coma , I stayed at home during the days making calls, paying off bills and going through papers. I knew he would have plenty of visitors. At night, after visiting hours, I would quietly stay in his hospital room. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Little did I know that during those visits by his family during the day, his family talked openly about plotting against me. I would be told this later by one of his relatives. I don’t think I’ll ever know why. I had no idea they felt that way about me. It was some time later when I found out. What I can honestly open my eyes now and see and say, is that my husband was the main culprit as to why all of these problems took place. There were things that I just refused to see plus he had opened the door to it all.
Months went by and my husband recovered. So I thought. I stuck closer to him to try to take care of him but I received a tremendous amount of rejection from him and simply chalked it up to old age stubbornness. I began to fall into a state of depression and was seeing a therapist. Something was wrong but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I would cry all the time and finally said to my husband that if he wanted me to leave, I would leave or stay if that’s what he wanted. Whatever he wanted me to do. I told him that I just couldn’t live like that anymore. The irony is that I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was wrong. I think the last straw was when I placed a rug in the middle of the dining room walk area and his sister, in an amazingly harsh voice said, “I picked that up because I don’t want that there”. His sister lived down the street with her partner, but she was telling me what to do in my house, with husband watching it all, saying nothing. In another incident, she hired a woman to watch my husband during the day. This woman hated my guts and even cursed me out. But she hired her with my husband’s approval, or should I say lack of protest, and my disapproval. I slipped further into depression.
With all this going on and me in a fog, one day I received a call from the rehab hospital’s social worker. She told me what was about to take place in terms of my husband's care and that it had been agreed upon by my husband’s sister, who had power-of-attorney for my husband. She quickly stated, “but you know that, right”, referring to the power-of-attorney. I was so embarrassed that I acted as if I knew. I didn’t. I never said anything to him about it at the time, but when I asked him if he wanted me to leave, he said no and practically begged me to stay. He made a suggestion that we find two couples each who were friends whose marriages we respected, and take them to dinner to help us sort things out. We did, and we had one couple/friend on each side. One of his and one of mine. During dinner I told them about the power-of -attorney and how embarrassed and down I was about it. I thought I no longer needed it but certainly didn’t want anyone else to have it. My job is to take care of him. Why would he have so little faith in me. That night, everyone told him he was wrong and that it was simply understood that each one of their spouses' would be their power-of-attorney. They also told him to keep his family out of his marriage. It was a big, big part of the problem.
That night during the drive home, he offered to give me the power-of-attorney. I didn’t want to take it because I felt he was now okay and I didn’t need it. God knew better. I explained we could get it the following Friday, when I was off work. He went right back to his family and told them when I got the power-of-attorney. They went nuts. It’s unbelievable how they went off. I placed it in my bank safe until I heard a phone call between he and his brother Ben. They were going to use the power-of-attorney to reverse mortgage the house, pull out all the equity and have him divorce me (I had some money saved) so this would have been a win on his side. Furthermore, his brother scolded him that he better not tell me anything and that I might try to push him off the cruise ship we were about to get on for vacation that Friday. I ran to my lawyer and told him what I’d heard. He said I had an option to transfer the house into my name using the power-of-attorney because he was making bad decisions. That’s what I did the day we left for vacation.
The drawing up of the new deed and transfer all took place within less than a week and we were on our way on a cruise vacation in late August, with about 16 of my family members and friends. No time to think about anything. The entire vacation was spent with me thinking about how I was going to tell him what I had done. When we returned, I told him but while we were away, his family had tried to get the money through Wells Fargo’s loan officer (who was well aware that I was being negated). They had all made the arrangements in what they thought was secret. I told him what I had done and part of the reason why. I didn't reveal how I knew. Instead of being mad, he seemed to be relieved. I think it may have been because I came to him before he confronted me. From that point on we went to all utility companies and the mortgage company, the collection bureau and the revenue department as he watched me pay off all of the debt to the tune of over $35,000 (mostly taxes). He had to sign off on everything to put my name on it all before I could take it over. That infuriated his family to no end. They already had plans for the money. From this point on, the fight was really on. They even told him that the money used to pay down the bills was his money. It absolutely wasn't, but they were lying the entire time anyway.
For months I put up with unbelievable antics from his family. In January of 2008 he went into a coma the day after I finally decided to leave him. I threw in the towel, scared of what they might be plotting. It just wasn’t worth it. I rented a hotel for a week and while there, received a call from his daughter asking why he was not answering the phone. I went back to the house to check on him and found him passed out. I had the ambulance take him to the hospital. Shortly afterward his sister arrived and told the hospital that I was not to be informed of anything. After begging them through his daughter, not to pull the plug on him immediately, as they wanted to do, he died 10 days later. By the way, he died after waking from the coma for several days and beginning to show improvement and responsiveness. His family in the meantime through their lawyer, changed the deed out of my name while he was in the coma and took it to be registered 2 days prior. It was clear that the intent was to change the house into his name, pull the plug so he could die and the house, by then in the estate, would be handled by his sister Marion. Purely by the grace of God I went to City Hall and found they changed the deed. I changed it back into my name. They pulled the plug on my husband two days later, causing him to die and thinking the house was back in his name. You see, many weeks before, they had him sign so many papers he didn’t know what he signed. That’s a quote from him. They had him sign over full control of everything to them. But they knew I zeroed all bills out. They got the business and his car, but that still wasn't enough. Little did they know, I never wanted any of it.
My husband was now dead and the house was back in my name. Though it didn’t quite end there, that is the basis for the founding of the organization. See, I was fortunate to have the resources to triumph in this situation even though it was a house that I didn’t want. It was nothing but a burden to me, but that’s not the point. On the constant visits to City Hall I was told that there is nothing that they could do about the deed being fraudulently transferred out of my name. But as people of ill-intent, they did what they always do. At any rate, the bureaucracy at City Hall was terrible, yet they were able to remove the house out of my name fully without me or legal authority. Through my trials and tribulations, I realized that no one should ever have to go through what I did, and from the week that I put him in the ground, I set out to help others so they would not have to go through what I did. That’s been my mission ever since.
Since that time, our organization has given countless workshops, repaired and fixed properties for individuals and non-profits and ran a summer sailing program for unexposed youth. I was blessed to be able to bring the organization this far, but not only am I no longer able to financially support it, I plan to extend my reach. We are seeking to help stem the tide of property loss and money mismanagement in low income Philadelphia communities by offering free financial literacy courses to the public. We have sought private funding through banking organizations but with no connections or a grant writer to steer us through the maze, we've not been awarded any money. The money raised here will all be utilized to help with operating expenses, pay down incurred debts from our fundraiser and finance our organization's community projects. Because I need to step down as president at some point, due to undisclosed reasons, anyone entering the role as president also needs to be compensated. We have come too far as an organization to let it all die if I am unable to lead it. We are in the process of changing bylaws to reflect compensation, now that the position has become a full-time job. Your support may mean the difference between life and death for our organization so we truly appreciate your contribution and thank you in advance. In the meantime, please click the link below to visit our website to find out more about our organization and what we do.
www.letsseeifwecanhelp.org
In the late nineteen-nineties I took a course on public speaking given through my employer. I remember that during the class my instructor seemed to be very impressed and insisted that I had a story to tell and should write a book. I would go on to hear that countless times over the next two decades. I don’t know what she heard that she thought really needed to be shared, but it was nothing compared to what I would eventually have to say. Though I must admit, some of the characters are the same. This is the first time I’ve ever sat down to write my story and I am going to make it as brief as possible but keep in mind that it is a very long and intricate one. Bearing in mind that I have enough content to write a book, I’m going to try to make it just a short story for the purposes of giving the audience an overview.
The purpose of the story is only to fill in some blanks and give potential crowdfunding donors information on how I started this organization and why I feel it so important to keep it going. Let me too say that I have invested over $100,000. in cash of my own money over the last 11 years to keep it going and have never received a penny in financing. Not only is everyone a volunteer, I also have not taken a salary. I also pay for our annual fundraiser which has cost me much money but never earned any money. I've consistently put money back into it to make it bigger and better and have also started paying people who have graciously volunteered their time over the years. One day I’m sure it will profit, through necessary sponsorships, vendors and patrons. The purpose of not seeking government grants was so that we would always be able to continue our work in the community without being restricted or having our hands tied. As a successful fundraising campaign, this will enable us to serve our community in anyway that we can. That being said, it’s important that readers know our mission. Taken directly from our website, in part it reads:
Let’s See If We Can Help, Inc. is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization incorporated in 2008 whose main mission is helping to educate the general public and resolve issues involving tangled deeds and property rights. … We focus not only on the issues or problems but also the education of participants by emphasizing the importance and impact of estate planning and offering guidance as it relates to planning and the process…we also reach out to the community to provide help and sponsorship where we can…through such additional programs as our ‘Get Ready to Set Sail’ and ‘MLK Day Project’.
This has been my mission since 2008 when I started this organization. I didn’t know it then but in early 2007 my life was about to change drastically, and for months, I wouldn’t even be aware of it. During the Spring of 2007 I went to work on a Habitat project in New Orleans. I would not allow my husband, George, to go due to fear that he may get lost in the midst of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You see, he had already begun to wander off, but would find his way back, totally disheveled and argumentative because I questioned him. I would be scared to death, not knowing where he was, and each time he would show up once again looking like he had been through the wringer. When in New Orleans, I spoke with him by phone, what seems like every waking minute I was not working. He wasn’t taking care of himself as I thought he could, and the day I returned home, he went into a coma.
My husband of 17 years never allowed me into his business matters, whether his actual barbershop business (fine), or the home (bad move). I was foolish to stand for that. When he went into the coma, I found myself cleaning up his entire years’ worth of messes. I didn’t really mind because I knew I could do a much better job than he, but he just wouldn’t let me. I think he was so bad at it that he was embarrassed to let me see just how bad he was at taking care of business. Sounds good on the outside, but believe me it wasn’t. There’s just not enough time to go into it. While he was hospitalized in the coma , I stayed at home during the days making calls, paying off bills and going through papers. I knew he would have plenty of visitors. At night, after visiting hours, I would quietly stay in his hospital room. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Little did I know that during those visits by his family during the day, his family talked openly about plotting against me. I would be told this later by one of his relatives. I don’t think I’ll ever know why. I had no idea they felt that way about me. It was some time later when I found out. What I can honestly open my eyes now and see and say, is that my husband was the main culprit as to why all of these problems took place. There were things that I just refused to see plus he had opened the door to it all.
Months went by and my husband recovered. So I thought. I stuck closer to him to try to take care of him but I received a tremendous amount of rejection from him and simply chalked it up to old age stubbornness. I began to fall into a state of depression and was seeing a therapist. Something was wrong but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I would cry all the time and finally said to my husband that if he wanted me to leave, I would leave or stay if that’s what he wanted. Whatever he wanted me to do. I told him that I just couldn’t live like that anymore. The irony is that I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was wrong. I think the last straw was when I placed a rug in the middle of the dining room walk area and his sister, in an amazingly harsh voice said, “I picked that up because I don’t want that there”. His sister lived down the street with her partner, but she was telling me what to do in my house, with husband watching it all, saying nothing. In another incident, she hired a woman to watch my husband during the day. This woman hated my guts and even cursed me out. But she hired her with my husband’s approval, or should I say lack of protest, and my disapproval. I slipped further into depression.
With all this going on and me in a fog, one day I received a call from the rehab hospital’s social worker. She told me what was about to take place in terms of my husband's care and that it had been agreed upon by my husband’s sister, who had power-of-attorney for my husband. She quickly stated, “but you know that, right”, referring to the power-of-attorney. I was so embarrassed that I acted as if I knew. I didn’t. I never said anything to him about it at the time, but when I asked him if he wanted me to leave, he said no and practically begged me to stay. He made a suggestion that we find two couples each who were friends whose marriages we respected, and take them to dinner to help us sort things out. We did, and we had one couple/friend on each side. One of his and one of mine. During dinner I told them about the power-of -attorney and how embarrassed and down I was about it. I thought I no longer needed it but certainly didn’t want anyone else to have it. My job is to take care of him. Why would he have so little faith in me. That night, everyone told him he was wrong and that it was simply understood that each one of their spouses' would be their power-of-attorney. They also told him to keep his family out of his marriage. It was a big, big part of the problem.
That night during the drive home, he offered to give me the power-of-attorney. I didn’t want to take it because I felt he was now okay and I didn’t need it. God knew better. I explained we could get it the following Friday, when I was off work. He went right back to his family and told them when I got the power-of-attorney. They went nuts. It’s unbelievable how they went off. I placed it in my bank safe until I heard a phone call between he and his brother Ben. They were going to use the power-of-attorney to reverse mortgage the house, pull out all the equity and have him divorce me (I had some money saved) so this would have been a win on his side. Furthermore, his brother scolded him that he better not tell me anything and that I might try to push him off the cruise ship we were about to get on for vacation that Friday. I ran to my lawyer and told him what I’d heard. He said I had an option to transfer the house into my name using the power-of-attorney because he was making bad decisions. That’s what I did the day we left for vacation.
The drawing up of the new deed and transfer all took place within less than a week and we were on our way on a cruise vacation in late August, with about 16 of my family members and friends. No time to think about anything. The entire vacation was spent with me thinking about how I was going to tell him what I had done. When we returned, I told him but while we were away, his family had tried to get the money through Wells Fargo’s loan officer (who was well aware that I was being negated). They had all made the arrangements in what they thought was secret. I told him what I had done and part of the reason why. I didn't reveal how I knew. Instead of being mad, he seemed to be relieved. I think it may have been because I came to him before he confronted me. From that point on we went to all utility companies and the mortgage company, the collection bureau and the revenue department as he watched me pay off all of the debt to the tune of over $35,000 (mostly taxes). He had to sign off on everything to put my name on it all before I could take it over. That infuriated his family to no end. They already had plans for the money. From this point on, the fight was really on. They even told him that the money used to pay down the bills was his money. It absolutely wasn't, but they were lying the entire time anyway.
For months I put up with unbelievable antics from his family. In January of 2008 he went into a coma the day after I finally decided to leave him. I threw in the towel, scared of what they might be plotting. It just wasn’t worth it. I rented a hotel for a week and while there, received a call from his daughter asking why he was not answering the phone. I went back to the house to check on him and found him passed out. I had the ambulance take him to the hospital. Shortly afterward his sister arrived and told the hospital that I was not to be informed of anything. After begging them through his daughter, not to pull the plug on him immediately, as they wanted to do, he died 10 days later. By the way, he died after waking from the coma for several days and beginning to show improvement and responsiveness. His family in the meantime through their lawyer, changed the deed out of my name while he was in the coma and took it to be registered 2 days prior. It was clear that the intent was to change the house into his name, pull the plug so he could die and the house, by then in the estate, would be handled by his sister Marion. Purely by the grace of God I went to City Hall and found they changed the deed. I changed it back into my name. They pulled the plug on my husband two days later, causing him to die and thinking the house was back in his name. You see, many weeks before, they had him sign so many papers he didn’t know what he signed. That’s a quote from him. They had him sign over full control of everything to them. But they knew I zeroed all bills out. They got the business and his car, but that still wasn't enough. Little did they know, I never wanted any of it.
My husband was now dead and the house was back in my name. Though it didn’t quite end there, that is the basis for the founding of the organization. See, I was fortunate to have the resources to triumph in this situation even though it was a house that I didn’t want. It was nothing but a burden to me, but that’s not the point. On the constant visits to City Hall I was told that there is nothing that they could do about the deed being fraudulently transferred out of my name. But as people of ill-intent, they did what they always do. At any rate, the bureaucracy at City Hall was terrible, yet they were able to remove the house out of my name fully without me or legal authority. Through my trials and tribulations, I realized that no one should ever have to go through what I did, and from the week that I put him in the ground, I set out to help others so they would not have to go through what I did. That’s been my mission ever since.
Since that time, our organization has given countless workshops, repaired and fixed properties for individuals and non-profits and ran a summer sailing program for unexposed youth. I was blessed to be able to bring the organization this far, but not only am I no longer able to financially support it, I plan to extend my reach. We are seeking to help stem the tide of property loss and money mismanagement in low income Philadelphia communities by offering free financial literacy courses to the public. We have sought private funding through banking organizations but with no connections or a grant writer to steer us through the maze, we've not been awarded any money. The money raised here will all be utilized to help with operating expenses, pay down incurred debts from our fundraiser and finance our organization's community projects. Because I need to step down as president at some point, due to undisclosed reasons, anyone entering the role as president also needs to be compensated. We have come too far as an organization to let it all die if I am unable to lead it. We are in the process of changing bylaws to reflect compensation, now that the position has become a full-time job. Your support may mean the difference between life and death for our organization so we truly appreciate your contribution and thank you in advance. In the meantime, please click the link below to visit our website to find out more about our organization and what we do.
www.letsseeifwecanhelp.org
Organizer
Iris Henry
Organizer
Philadelphia, PA
