Friends fix up home for local man who suddenly has 4 kids full-time

Larry Rader, back right, gets help getting his home ready for his four children.

When Jennifer Storch, 30, was killed in an auto accident in Boise on Jan. 29, the plight of the child delivered the day of her death and her family made headlines across the Treasure Valley.

But nowhere was the impact of her death any greater than for a Mountain Home man, her ex-husband, Larry Rader.

Rader and Storch, who had been married for 14 years until just a few years ago, when they divorced and she remarried, shared custody of their four children, Brennden, 14, Bre-Anna, 13, Daidyn, 8, and Courtnee, 5.

At the time, Rader said, the arrangement was good for everyone since his work at Guerdon Homes, a manufactured housing business in Boise, often took him out of town for long periods of time.

After the divorce, he bought a "fixer upper" house in Mountain Home "because it's cheaper to live here" and began working on it so that his kids would have a nice place to live during times he had custody of them.

But when the children's mother died, he was suddenly thrust into the role of a full-time single parent -- and the house really wasn't ready for all of them -- at least not to the standard that he wanted to provide.

And that's when he found out just how many friends he had.

Saturday, his fellow employees at work descended on his house just off American Legion Boulevard on N. 9th East Street, to virtually rebuild it.

The rooms Rader had been adding on to the house or fixing up for his kids, both bedrooms and bathrooms, were finished, exterior work was completed, and much of the rest of the house underwent a complete makeover.

"He's always helping everybody else, but he never wants to ask for help," said Joe Parkhill, one of the friends who helped on the house.

Sunday, Rader put down his own hammer for a few minutes to reflect on what it meant to have all his friends and fellow employees helping out. "It means 'love,' to me," he said. "It's very special. It means a lot to me and the kids. They're good kids. They deserve the best."

Until the work could be completed, his four children were staying with his brother, Allen, in Mountain Home.

Rader, himself, wasn't around the entire time his friends were working on his house. He had to drive his daughter to Boise for her driver's training class. To limit the disruption in their lives, he's taking the kids to Boise each day to complete their school year there.

And, according to Steve Gabriel, one of the fellow workers at Guerdon Homes, their boss is helping out as well, by rearranging Rader's work assignments so he can remain here locally, rather than being sent to projects all over the region.

"I just can't thank everyone, enough," Rader said.

But for his friends at work, it was "just something that you do for a member of the family," Gabriel said.