Reinventing Herself: From Realtor to Helping People ReBuild Their Devastated Homes

Looking for meaning, purpose, inspiration, anyone? Champion realtor Lois Krasilovsky's most recent reincarnation is to organize trips for adults to at-risk regions of the US, where she and her team are helping impoverished families rebuild their broken homes and community buildings. In October she is taking a group to St. Bernard's Parish, a neighborhood adjacent to the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, probably the most hard-hit neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina. They'll stay at a church and work at a comprehensive community center, built by Iray Nabatoff, a volunteer from New Hampshire who came to New Orleans after Katrina and never left. The group will work with the local people, mostly African-Americans, to gut and frame new houses, put up sheet rock, and perform any task that will help. That includes food and water distribution, preparing and serving meals... with some New Orleans jazz thrown in so her group members can get immersed in the local culture. "You're never too old to start something new," Lois says enthusiastically. "Some people get so sedentary when they get to 60 and 70...it's new ideas and passions...I don't intend to ever stop. I think it's a healthy way to live, don't you?"

This is Lois' second helping voyage to New Orleans - the first was in 2006 when she accompanied a group of students from the Noble and Greenough School, her sons' alma mater, in the Boston suburbs. On that trip, in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity, the group was doing its required community service project and it galvanized Lois to make this kind of work a major part of her life. She's using Nobles' trips as a model for her own organization, which she hopes to grow to make a contribution to human beings who are not as fortunate as she's been.

In the spring she went with the Noble School group to the town of Bugsby at the North Cheyenne Indian reservation near Billings, Montana, an "amazing spiritual experience" for this Jewish woman who grew up in relative affluence in the Northeast. She found the people to be welcoming and they quickly acclimated her and the schoolchildren, so that they felt part of the community. Lois and the students participated in sweat lodges and prayer lodges, which are designed for recovery for women who've had domestic problems such as battering. Lois and the group learned about the tribe’s tradition of going to a "magic mountain" where they fast for 4 days and live alone, a healing spiritual journey. They all cooked and sang and danced together. The local people entertained them by taking them to a rodeo and to a 9000-acre ranch where they went horseback riding through the magnificent countryside. They were introduced to the Native American culture of these people whose traditions have survived despite many obstacles, including poverty and alcoholism. "Wonderful people we met," Lois said.

How did she get to this place, having been a wildly successful businesswoman for three decades? She reinvented herself throughout her adulthood - after college, she became a French teacher, then started an enrichment after-school program called "Just Kids" in the 1970s before those were commonplace, then got her real estate license in 1977 and earned many honors, including "Realtor of the Year" during her 31-year career owning her own companies, the most recent one, called "Homes by Lois."

Nurturing, giving, and educating have always been a part of her soul. This project is just an extension of her love for helping people of all ages make good decisions for themselves. "It's in my blood," she says. For this woman who's relished anything having to do with homes, seeing them, owning, them, fixing them up, selling them, figuring out the finances of them, this community service work is a natural outcome.

When her younger son was in 7th grade, she was the only parent who volunteered to work on his school 's community service projects. Her first experience was when she and the students went to a shelter for disabled people and pushed the wheelchairs ahead of the runners at the Boston Marathon. That and other volunteer experiences gave her a taste of what a contribution she can make in someone's life. At the time, she was busy earning money to save for her boys' college education, but the yearning to do that on a bigger scale stayed with her. 

Lois is planning to do 4 more trips in the next calendar year and to build a core group of people to accompany her regularly. She's concentrating on community service in needy neighborhoods in the US, rather than going to foreign countries. Her vision is to live much like the local people, participating 24/7, not to escape to the Holiday Inn at 5PM, and to participate in the culture and history of the community. A teacher at heart, she wants to educate her recruits about the strengths and challenges of the people they're there to serve. It seems to give Lois a delicious feeling to be instrumental in helping a poor person resurrect his or her home, using her own hands this time, not only her mind, to make that happen.

If you're interested in joining Lois's community service team, write to her at Lois@HomesByLois.com. What does her story inspire you to do next, after you leave your mid-year's career?