April 21, 2011 - On March 14, First United Methodist Church Pastor Martha Myre entered the church's sanctuary for her early morning devotional and noticed something amiss. Part of the east ceiling had fallen in sometime in the night.
"This is not a good thing to happen any time but it is especially stressful with a little over a month before the church's extensive Easter Week activities," commented Pastor Myre.
As the trustees stood and gazed up at the gaping hole more than fifteen feet up, there were several theories voiced as to what caused the tile ceiling to give way. The area had been known to leak years back, but the roof had been redone several years back. There had been no visible sagging noticed. The choir is too small to have brought the house down; however, their Christmas program may have weakened it a bit. There was the consideration of the high winds the night before; however, Leonard is no stranger to high winds. It was concluded, simply, that things like this happen with a 100-year-old building.
As luck would have it, or more accurately, some divine intervention, the Methodist Church has a good working relationship with local contractor Mike McCoy of McCoy's Construction. Trustee president Billy Grimes had called McCoy before he contacted anyone else. Again a higher power was at work here. McCoy's schedule had an opening to get the work done in time for the Holy Week Services.
"Mike McCoy has done work for us before and done it well. He is always fair with his pricing and he will do us a good job. In my opinion we do not need to waste our time getting other bids," said Grimes, during a Trustee meeting the following Wednesday.
The Trustee Committee agreed, and voted to have McCoy's Construction install a new drop ceiling in the east section.
"Knowing that the old tile ceiling had to come down and that it was holding up considerable debris from the previous roofing job I was most concerned with the protection of the irreplaceable stain glass windows," said Kyle Brown, who is fairly new to the church and serving his first year as a Trustee. "My concerns were unfounded, however. The first thing Mike did was to cover every window in that section with plywood. He went to great lengths to protect all the building surfaces. I was very impressed."
The job was completed in good time and just before the already scheduled church-wide clean up day on April 9. Thanks to the quality cleanup work that the McCoy crew did the sanctuary cleanup was almost routine.
Grimes said simply, "That's the way Mike does things. He never leaves the job at the end of the day that he hasn't cleaned the work area. His workers are very nice and pleasant. It is always a pleasure to see the work he has done and know that you can depend on him to do what he says he will do. It is an asset to this community to have a person of his character to do work in our community."
Pastor Myre and the First United Methodist Church members would like to thank McCoy and his crew for doing such a good job to make sure their sanctuary was ready for Holy Week.
"We feel blessed that Mike and McCoy Construction are a part of the Leonard community," said Brown. "It pays to shop local first!"
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