‘Knob’ Bob and Linn a handle team at Habitat Store
by Denise Allen Membreno

Retirees Bob and Linn Hoffman have taken on a tedious task and, in doing so, have helped dozens of Roanoke families buy homes.

“Knob” Bob, as some at The Habitat Store in Roanoke call him, and his wife Linn organize the cabinet knob and handle section of the store. They started volunteering a little more than two years ago, right before the store opened. Bob says there was a semi-truck full of cabinet hardware a home improvement store had donated.

In fact, there were more than a million pieces of hardware in that truck. The Hoffmans sorted, catalogued and numbered each piece. The knobs and handles were then put in the numbered drawers of the sales floor display. Linn says it’s important that only one type of hardware is kept in each drawer so the shopper doesn’t go home with a set of mismatched hardware. Overstock is kept upstairs in boxes marked with corresponding numbers.

The job is ongoing. A small room is filled with boxes from the truck that have yet to be touched. 
“It’s pretty enormous,” store director Maria Wilson Gilmer says of the job the Hoffmans do. “They made it [the knob and handle section] their own. I wish I had more volunteers like them. They are a godsend.”

Bob is retired from the FAA. Linn raised five children and worked at the Girl Scout Council. Bob came in contact with Habitat for Humanity as a member of Knights of Columbus. He helped build a Habitat House.

“We don’t have the strength to haul things at the building site so we come here and organize,” says Linn.

The Hoffmans say the clientele of The Habitat Store on Patterson Avenue near downtown Roanoke includes people renovating old homes shop and folks building new homes in posh subdivisions. 

The inventory of the store is donated by home improvement stores, builders and people who fix up their homes and get rid of the old fixtures. That’s why hard-to-find items can sometimes be found at the Habitat Store and at a good price.

Knobs and handles aren’t exactly a big ticket item, but as Linn points out a box of a thousand pieces of hardware sold at a buck or two a piece really adds up. Some of these knob and handles are sold at home improvement stores for more than $10 each, so the opportunity is there for the shopper to really save. 

Linn says they volunteer because it helps other people and it gives the couple, married for 38 years, some together time. “The hours are flexible, so we can still do all the traveling we want,” adds Linn. “I grew up learning where ever you go make it a better place. We’ve been lucky he’s always had a job since we’ve been married.

Bob adds, “I have a good retirement so I can afford to volunteer.”

The Hoffmans encourage anyone with a little extra time to volunteer at The Habitat Store. The money the store generates helps fund the building of Habitat houses. Habitat built eight homes in Roanoke last year. The goal is to build 13 more by June 2004, the end of Habitat’s fiscal year. In the 2005 fiscal year, the charity expects to build 20 homes.

Writer Denise Allen Membreno lives in the Roanoke Valley.

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