It wasn”™t a particularly good day for Leigh Overland. Or at least until the phone call. His Range Rover had broken down (at 130,000 miles, no less) and “I limped home tired and hot.” Then “I got a telephone call from a developer I knew.” The television program “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” was going to tear down a Bridgeport family”™s house and build a new one, and the producers were looking for an architect, the developer told him.
“The next thing I knew, he put me on the phone with the producers, who wanted to meet with me the next day at the site,” Overland said. He met with the ABC television program”™s executive producer and a half-dozen other “Makeover” staffers, then walked through the Hollister Avenue home. The house in which the single mom and her three teenage children lived had been damaged by fire and vandalism; “It was ravished,” he said.
After his tour, the producers asked if he”™d design a new home for the family. “I automatically said, ”˜Sure, I”™d like to help this family, without knowing a lot of the details,” he said. “I didn”™t think twice about it. I was brought up that way, to always know the value of giving, that for society to survive, it”™s necessary for us to be giving back. In Yiddish it”™s called ”˜tzedakah (tze-duck-ah)”™” ”“ which can be translated as ”˜charity”™ but suggests a duty rather than mere magnanimity.
His strong sense of community service, however, was tempered with a bit of deadline reality. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 26, and the producers said they could use some conceptual plans e-mailed to them by Friday morning. “Before they said that, I was thinking, ”˜This is great.”™ But the whole illusion went sliding away as I realized I was going back to my office. I spent the next three days there designing this home.”
The three days stretched into four weeks as Overland and his staff devoted their efforts to the “Makeover” project ”“ along with a small army of Fairfield County businesses and volunteers. Construction began July 27, and on Aug. 1, the family moved into its new home.
“Usually we push things along fairly quickly,” Overland said of the rapid turnaround of his Danbury architectural firm”™s residential projects. “We really work pretty quickly and efficiently. We know the ropes and building departments, and a project like this would have been a four- to six-month process.”
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Daydreams and drawing
Overland “decided very late” on architecture as a career. Most architects, he said, start building things with building blocks at an early age, so “very late” was his junior year in high school when his guidance counselor asked what he planned to study in college. “I had no idea,” he said. “He asked me what I liked, and I told him the only thing that came to mind was that I liked drawing and the arts. He suggested architecture, but I had no idea what it really was.”
The guidance counselor suggested that the education for becoming an architect “would be so well rounded that I could go into anything with the degree.” As soon as he entered the New York Institute of Technology, however, “I realized what I wanted to be.” Not only that, but “it cleared up why I was always reprimanded about daydreaming,” he said. “I was always staring out the window and imagining things.” When daydreams and architectural training were put together, “it became my life, and now it”™s hard to differentiate between work and fun.”
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When he imagines a client”™s house, “I just dream about what it should look like and all of a sudden it turns into a movie in my mind,” he said. “It”™s like I”™m standing in every space until it develops into a home. At the end of the movie, I”™m standing at the front door or sitting on the front porch. I”™m in each of the rooms, experiencing them from every angle until it”™s what I want it to look like. Then I grab and sketch paper and just start drawing it.”
Translating the daydreams into drawings, however, took some work. After graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1976, Overland worked for four different architectural firms as he progressed through his three-year apprenticeship required before he could become licensed. He was living in Danbury and commuting to Westport to work with an architect “who showed me how to transform what was in my mind onto paper.”
“I remember the day it happened,” Overland said. “I was sitting at the table and he was asking me to come up with a design. He saw me struggling and he came over, took my hand and pencil, and said, ”˜Stop thinking; just draw.”™ His hand just started moving, drawing spaces and rooms. It clicked. He stepped away and I just let the pencil move. Everything just flowed. What was deep in my mind came out through the pencil, and ever since design has been a wonderment to me.”
To this day, 30 years later, the reality of a finished project is the same as the movie he creates in his mind, Overland said, even down to the materials. “When ”˜Extreme Makeover”™ asked what to do with the interiors, I said the kitchen cabinets need to be pale yellow. The movie and the reality are one and the same.”
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Boards and committees
The Hollister Avenue makeover may have been Overland”™s crowning achievement of his years of tzedakah, which includes donating his 40-foot yacht on Long Island Sound to Danbury area nonprofits, taking up to eight donors on a cruise around the Norwalk islands for cocktails and hors d”™oeuvres. “I love to cook, so most of the time I end up cooking and serving seafood dishes and desserts, wine and drinks,” he said. Among the nonprofits he”™s helped are the Danbury Women”™s Center, a YMCA after-school arts project and a job training program for adults. “I”™ve been here in Danbury so long that I”™m on many boards,” he said, including an architectural advisory committee that reviews the aesthetics for changes to downtown buildings.
But Overland has a deeper view of his tzedakah, that his efforts to help others will multiply as those he helped in turn reach out to help. He”™s confident, for example, that the Hollister Avenue family “will give back even more, so that the positive impact on everyone they touch will multiply.”
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