The Christmas Spirit in a Habitat House

In January 2008, the Rockefeller Center’s 75th annual Christmas tree was milled and converted to two-by-fours to help a hurricane-affected family in the U.S. Gulf Coast achieve homeownership.

The family it helped was The Davisons. Through determination and hard work, Tracey Davison moved her four daughters from a government-subsidized housing project into a duplex apartment not far from the beach in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Two days later, Hurricane Katrina nearly wiped the neighborhood off the map.

Until this year, Davison and her daughters -- Ashunti, Nylah, Majsa and Karly -- had stayed in a friend’s home, her brother’s living room, a docked cruise ship, a FEMA trailer and finally, an apartment that she couldn’t afford without FEMA’s help.

During the 2008 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, however, Tracey Davison finally got a permanent place to call home -- a baby blue house built with the lumber from the Rockefeller Christmas tree. “Owning a home was something I wanted to do for my girls,” says the assistant teacher. “They learn something by seeing me go to work every day. This was the next thing they needed to see me do. They need to see what’s possible.”

Tishman Speyer, the company that owns Rockefeller Center, has similar plans to mill and donate the 2009 tree.