Alex Paul
Tears flowed Easter Sunday as the Lon Zitek family saw their newly remodeled home, designed specifically to enable their wheelchair-bound son, Robert, access to every room.
The Ziteks were featured on ABC television’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition in one of that show’s most intense weeklong-long make overs.
Mr. Zitek is a 1974 SHHS graduate who went on to earn a degree in business from OSU. His family spent several years in Sweet Home where his father owned a tavern and his mother worked for Willamette Industries. Mr. Zitek is played football, basketball and baseball for the Huskies.
The Zitek family includes mother Patricia, daughter Nisia, a college graduate in theater arts and brother Andrew, 13.
Nisia submitted the family’s application to Extreme Makeover because she wanted her brother to be able to gain access throughout the family’s tri-level L.A., Calif. area home. Robert was injured two years ago in an auto accident while en route to his job.
He has since been involved in rehabilitation programs and is confined to a wheelchair. The family’s home was not conducive to wheelchair use, but it is now.
More than 112 crafts persons spent seven days transforming the home while ABC sent the family on a dream cruise to the Bahamas.
When they returned, they found a completely new home featuring something for everyone in the family. The home is completely accessible to all family members and thanks to a three story elevator, Robert, can now move about the third level and lower levels of the home without assistance from other family members.
“They thought I was pretty much dead when they found me on the freeway,” Robert said of his tragic accident.
The lower level of the home was transformed into an area where Robert can basically have his own space, including equipment set up for musical production for someone with limited arm mobility. Music, he said, is his passion and will give him an outlet to deal with his emotions about life after his accident.
All doorways and bathrooms were built to accommodate a wheelchair and doors and lights were hooked to electronically controlled units that open and close or turn on and off by voice command.
A fully landcaped yard gives Robert and the rest of the family space to enjoy time outside and the back yard also featured a pool where Robert can continue therapy, including a lift for access in and out of the water.
For the last two years, Lon Zitek had moved his in-home office to shared space with his daughter’s bedroom but Extreme Makeover provided both father and daughter with first-class work and bedroom spaces.
Brother Andrew, who enjoys cars, wasn’t forgotten by the show’s host, either. His room was complete remodeled with an automotive motif including a bedspread that features a Lemans racing stripe, tool chest dressers and automotive artwork on the walls.
An added bonus was a complete remodeling of what had been the start of a backyard fort into a fully functioning club house complete with TV, game players and movies.
The elevator portion of the project squeezed the show’s budget. One of the show’s participants set up a neighborhood auction to secure enough money to buy a large skylight which brightens Robert’s new lower level space. Program hosts autographed equipment and clothing that sold briskly to meet the need.
The elevator, a host said, “is like a lifeline for Robert.”
Throughout the show, the hosts played pranks on the family by sending them video letters of the project’s progress.
As the family enjoyed the cruise, they saw the house supposedly painted purple, the one color Mrs. Zitek said she really didn’t like and Nisia was given a “virtual tour” of her new bedroom, a construction trailer complete with fake wood paneling.
The project did not go without hitches.
Installation of the elevator caused much concern throughout the week and landscaping wasn’t completed until only moments before the family returned home. A dining room table, while beautiful, was also four feet too long and had to be skillfully cut to fit the space available.
In the end, the project, the biggest house taken on by the show, was outstanding.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mrs. Zitek said repeatedly.
Robert muttered to himself as he tried out the elevator for the first time, “Is this really happening?”
The remodeling also allows the Ziteks to eat together as a family, something they haven’t been able to do since Robert’s accident.