For months, Frank and Eva were heavily confined to their Elizabethtown homes.

Eva has a ruptured disc in her lower back. Frank fell in the couple’s front room and broke his hip.

Frank was wheelchair-bound and then used a cane. Both their health problems made it nearly impossible to navigate their front steps to leave their home. A grocery store trip required calling their son in from Columbus to help them move groceries from the car and into the house.

“It was rough getting him in and out of the house,” Eva said. “It is extremely hard even leaving the house, even to get the groceries. It is all I can do to go to the grocery store and to church.”

Thanks to volunteers from Forvia who built them a wheelchair ramp, Frank and Eva have regained their independence and can now safely navigate in and out of their home.

Forvia has partnered with the United Way of Bartholomew County for the Ramp It Up Program. This program has volunteers from the company building ADA-compliant ramps for people in Bartholomew County.

The day their ramp was built, Frank was shopping for a wagon so he could tow groceries up the ramp and regain his independence.

“The biggest benefit is him getting the electric chair so he can now do what he wants to do,” Eva said. “We couldn’t do it ourselves. It is going to be a God send.”

And what he wants to do is be independent and go outside into his yard so he can continue his favorite hobby: bird-watching.