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On Saturday, dozens of volunteers braved the rain to build bunk beds to support Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s (SHP) annual Bunks Across America National Build Day.

LaGrange SHP Chapter President Greg Watts said about 150 volunteers came out to New Ventures to help build beds for kids in need.

Watts said they hit their goal of 100 bunk beds constructed throughout the day. That’s been their goal for the event for the last couple of years for the annual National Build Day when SHP chapters across the country gather to build bunk beds for the children in their town who don’t have a bed to call their own.

LaGrange SHP had been planning to deliver some of the beds to the kids in need at the end of the bed build but the rain nixed that idea. He said they plan on delivering some of the beds next week.

“It was a good group, but it was raining, so it’s kind of hard to deliver in the rain,” Watts said.

Watts said the 100 beds constructed on Saturday should carry them into Christmas.

“The event was a success despite the rain,” Watts said.

“We had a good mix of people from all kinds of organizations. We had city clubs there. We had middle school teams there. We had scholars from the high schools. We had church people. We really had a good mix,” Watts said.

National Build Day is the biggest production day for SHP, the organization will continue to produce beds during the year, usually every couple of months.  

“We did 100 last year. That’s kind of our big build, and that’s kind of our goal for that one. It kind of gets us set for the fall because it’s so hard to schedule builds with all the school events and things that go on, and then you get into the holidays and people’s calendars just get full. So we try to get it early in the fall so we can get as many people there as we can,” Watts said.