One month after they married in 2002, Bill Hutson and his wife, Pam, started fixing roofs and porches and building wheelchair ramps, free of charge.
By the time they retired, Table Talk Ministries had completed just over $750,000 in repairs for clients in 12 states. It ran offices in Indiana and Texas at the same time and helped similar ministries start in West Virginia, New York, Texas and Missouri.
Now Hutson, a 65-year-old Army veteran with no writing background, has told the story in his first book. “With Only A Hammer” is available on Amazon and Audible.
“I’m not a writer. I wrote this to encourage people,” Hutson said. “Pam and I didn’t start with much. If we could do this with only a hammer, you can do something too.”
The work earned Hutson a Jefferson Award, presented by WRTV6 in Indianapolis, and the Chapel of the Four Chaplains Legion of Honor. In 2011, the Obama White House invited him to be honored as a Champion of Change, an honor that never came to fruition. The book takes that up in a chapter called “Which White House?”
It is also a love story. Every June 17, the Hutsons still share a cup of coffee to mark the day they first had coffee together. They call it Coffee Day, and it has its own chapter, alongside others titled “Teaching Guilt a Trade” and “She Didn’t Think Anybody Cared.”
Hutson now lives in Franklin, where he is Construction Manager for the veterans group 828VETS. He is available for on-camera and print interviews.