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thedrifter
09-18-06, 07:47 AM
Two hearts come together in Habitat home
In Fairmont, two people hoping for Habitat for Humanity houses met, fell in love and now need just one house for their blended family.

Robert Franklin, Star Tribune
To get a Habitat for Humanity house for herself and her three children, Rhonda Dettmer had to take a budgeting class. There was just one other student -- Shawn Shoen, a Marine veteran who also had three kids.

In the class in Fairmont, Minn., they learned about putting money away for home repairs, savings and even vacations.

And they learned about each other. He's a cool guy, she said, he's understanding, likes to joke around and lights up a room. She seemed like a good mom, he said, a really nice person and she's beautiful.

So now, instead of each of them getting a Habitat house, Dettmer and Shoen are getting just one, handicapped-accessible and with five bedrooms, big enough for their blended family.

About 60 people helped them dedicate the house Sunday in Fairmont, a southern Minnesota town near the Iowa border, and Shoen said, "We had a lot of fun."

And the couple will be married in two weeks -- thanks, in part, to a business card, a karaoke date and the multimillion-dollar philanthropy of a Minneapolis corporation.

Early on, they worked together at a Habitat booth at a home show, and "you could just tell that there was definitely a very strong connection there," said Staci Aukes-Thompson, a board member of Habitat for Humanity of Martin and Faribault counties.

They had a lot in common -- kids, budgeting skills, health challenges, divorces, living situations that needed to change.

Dettmer, 37, owns her house, but she's had problems with lead-based paint, roof damage and backed-up sewers, she said, and she didn't qualify for enough financing to fix it up.

She works at Aerospace Systems, a military contractor in Fairmont.

Her kids are son Kelvin, 12, and daughters Drew, 9, and Aleia, 7, who needs constant attention because she has a hard-to-control seizure disorder.

Shoen, 34, lost his left leg above the knee and suffered brain damage when his motorcycle was hit by a drunken driver while he was in the Marines in North Carolina, he said.

He had been living in his parents' basement with sons Lee, 14; Corey, 12, and Ian, 6. He's a stay-at-home dad who reels off his volunteer activities, including a school reading program, calling bingo for a retirement home, building ramps for handicapped people.

The all-volunteer Martin-Faribault Habitat usually builds one house a year, but was able to plan for two because of a program by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. The company has committed $105 million to Habitat nationally over five years, and is paying 70 percent of the cost for the Shoen-Dettmer house, with the rest coming from local sources.

With volunteer labor and handicapped accessibility features, the house will cost about $85,000, and the couple will pay that off with a no-interest Habitat mortgage that will return the money for other Habitat projects. Shoen also will get help from a Veterans Administration grant. The couple also put in hundreds of hours of sweat equity to get their new home.

A post-class signal

After their first class, he gave her a business card and asked if she had any single friends. It was his signal that he was available, but she wondered whether it meant that he wasn't interested in her.

Later she called him, they played Trivial Pursuit and went out with his friends for karaoke. "I danced with him, so it was officially a date," she said.

The kids have "their little back-and-forth" at times, but get along well and miss one another when they visit the other parents, Dettmer said. She said the integrated family is strong on meals and prayers together, and they're looking forward to a joyous, kid-filled wedding at Fairmont's Evangelical Covenant Church.

Meanwhile, the combined family means that someone else in Fairmont will get a Habitat house. And Aukes-Thompson said she was only half-joking when she told Dettmer and Shoen early on, "What's the point of us building each of you a house? Why don't you just save us the trouble?" Robert Franklin • 612-673-4543

Robert Franklin • rfranklin@startribune.com

Ellie