By Staff
Clif Knight, Hartselle Enquirer
One of Hartselle’s busiest homebuilders has pledged the labor needed to build a house for burn victim Billy Dale McDonald and his family of the Oak Ridge community and has set up a fund to take donations for needed building materials.
Anthony McCay of McCay’s Custom Homes Inc. said he hopes to break ground on a four-bedroom house for the McDonalds April1.
McDonald was working for McCay as a floor finisher when he was seriously injured in a job-related explosion in Huntsville in 2004. He suffered burns on 56 percent of his body when the chemicals he was using to remove glue from a sub-floor ignited. He lost a leg and all of his fingers and had to spend 15 months at UAB Hospital before he was well enough to come home. The tragic accident left him in a wheelchair and unable to work.
He and his wife Karen, an employee of Family Security, and her daughter, Ashley, 13, and his son, Timothy, 19, live in a mobile home.
McCay said he regretted that litigation stemming from the accident kept he and McDonald distanced from each other for over two years.
Donations to the house fund will be accepted at all three Family Security locations.