Conn. Police Help Late Officer's Wife Sell Home

Oct. 6, 2012
On Thursday afternoon, Stamford Police sgts. Charles White and Joseph Kennedy met at Bea Foreman's Oaklawn Avenue home to compare notes on how to best repaint and spruce the place up.

Oct. 06--STAMFORD -- On Thursday afternoon, Stamford Police sgts. Charles White and Joseph Kennedy met at Bea Foreman's Oaklawn Avenue home to compare notes on how to best repaint and spruce the place up.

White, a 24-year department veteran runs a business with his wife upgrading homes, said volunteering officers would be busy this weekend with big issues such as freshening up living areas and bedrooms with new paint and tearing out carpet and wallpaper that had faded or become worn out.

After tackling those, White said he would ask some home improvement contacts of his to help knock off other potential improvements, such as backdoor plantings and repainting an enclosed porch.

"When you're a police officer you know a lot of people and they are usually asking you for help," White said. "When you ask them for help back you often get a good response."

Kennedy and White were at Foreman's home as part of a recent effort involving a real estate home stager, a local nursing home, and Foreman's social worker to make Foreman's house more marketable for real estate agents who have been showing it.

Foreman, the widow of Jim Foreman, Stamford's first black police officer, needs to sell the two-story Cape Cod-style home she has lived in for 45 years to pay off a reverse mortgage that is due in November.

Foreman said she wanted to remain in the home where she lived with her husband until he passed away in November 2006 for as long as possible, but now wants to move to Brighton Gardens of Stamford, a local nursing home.

"I'm 95 years old and I've been trying to sell my home and the police association is coming in here in the next couple of days to spruce it up a bit," Foreman said. "I'm not able to maintain the house and I'm so grateful for their help."

Kennedy, the president of the Stamford Police Association, the police union, said officers fondly recalled Jim Foreman as a retiree who had remained in active contact with the police community following his retirement in 1977.

While most officers were too young to serve with Foreman, a Stamford native, they admired his sense of humor and enjoyed his presence at union-related functions, Kennedy said.

"Jimmy was a great guy and a fixture at our union meetings and that's how I got to know him," he said. "He had a great wit and was always helpful in terms of history of what took place in the union."

Channe Fodeman, a clinical social worker who has worked with Bea Foreman for several years, said she enlisted Kennedy and the union's help because of the urgency of trying to sell the home.

During the work, Brighton Gardens has also volunteered to put Foreman up through Saturday while her home is remodeled.

Fodeman also helped enlist with Birgit Anich, a Norwalk home staging expert, to craft a low-budget plan to improve the home.

Fodeman said the eagerness to assist Foreman is testament to the respect both for Jim Foreman and Bea Foreman's record of service as a Stamford public school teacher, and then as the first black president of the Stamford Board of Education.

"It's wonderful to see some of the kindness come back to her because she was a very committed volunteer in so many things," Fodeman said. "I'm just very grateful for everybody pulling together to help her with a bad situation."

Anich, who runs Birgit Anich Staging & Home Interiors said her goal was to choose suggestions that would address aspects that might turn off the types of younger families that have been buying homes in the neighborhood.

"More and more people want a move-in ready condition home," Anich said. "This neighborhood is a younger neighborhood so we hope to gear it towards that demographic."

In a slow market, Anich said more homeowners find it hard to sell homes as-is and must update them by painting rooms, installing new furniture, and even gutting and remodeling bathrooms and other features to grab the fancy of choosy buyers.

"In this case, we were just trying to give it a little bit more updated look," Anich said. "Buyers can be very, very, very picky and updating is one of the biggest things that is needed in homes that are not new constructions."

Kennedy said while funding is modest for the makeover, he hoped the union could catch the community's attention to offer crucial donations of money or material such as carpet.

"What we're doing is very basic because there are some things that might be over our heads," he said.

Julia Bartholomew, director of marketing for Brighton Gardens, said the nursing home has been working with Foreman for some time on a transition plan to move into the facility when the home is sold.

"The police are there putting on paint and replacing fixtures and working their magic and the bones of the house are pretty nice so it should sell," Bartholomew said. "We're just trying to be good neighbors and she is quite a lovely person."

Copyright 2012 - The Stamford Advocate, Conn.

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