Improving her community’s well-being

STORY & PHOTOS ALEX T. PASCHAL | FOR SMALL TOWN LIVING

If the walls of an inauspicious little building in Compton could talk, they would have a lot of stories to tell – after all, they’ve been standing for more than a century. Now they’ve got another tale to tell, and it’s a story with a happy ending, thanks to the president of this Lee County village, who helped spearhead a project to give the little local landmark a much-needed facelift.

The nip and tuck pointing began after Candy Jonsson decided to take matters into her own hands and rescue the building, which had seen better days. It was once home to village hall and jail before it was pressed into municipal service in another role, as the well building for the eastern Lee County village, whose population hovers around 300. Recently, though, the 110-year-old structure had fallen into disrepair.

Little remains of the well building’s former life as a jail, but there are a few telltale signs of its past, like this jail door.

RIGHT: Comp- ton Village

President Candy Jonsson stands outside the village’s well building that she and a two-man crew re- cently overhauled. ABOVE LEFT: Jons- son stands in the newly remodeled lab and chemical storage room.

Volunteer firefighter Joe Maino swapped a firehose for a paint bucket to help spruce up Compton’s well building.

That’s when Jonsson stepped in, with some mutual aid from a volunteer firefighter and a local contractor. She worked with Willett, Hoffmann and Associates to secure a USDA grant to help pay for repairs. Then she and her two-man crew went to work.

“We’re getting everything new inside here as far as elec- trical, pipes and furnace, so we figured, why not fix the walls while we were at it,” Jonsson said. With the help of local resident and volunteer firefighter Joe Maino, the two got to work painting, pulling down old plaster and clean- ing up the place. Local contractor Donavan Merriman did most of the heavy lifting, including rebuilding the stucco walls and tuck pointing the bricks outside.

Jonsson, who owns a small business, has had the time to devote to the project due to the coronavirus shutdown.

“We’ve been down here 2 or 3 weeks since I’m unem- ployed now,” she said with a laugh.

So, thanks to a some civic-minded folks with a little time on their hands and grease on their elbows, all’s well that ends well for that little brick building in Compton. n