Modernizing the 75-year-old mechanical systems at Detroit's St. Patrick's Senior Center has taken nearly four years, hundreds of hours of volunteer labor, and thousands of dollars in at-cost and donated supplies.

The inner-city Detroit parish off of Woodward has been the recipient of such generosity because of all the good it does. The parish's senior center serves 6,000 meals a month and offers meals, medical and dental care to the area's low-income senior citizens.

Over the years, Pipe Fitters Local 636 and their contractors and suppliers have teamed up to help the parish improve and upgrade its steam heating system, as well as take care of numerous other miscellaneous jobs. The latest project should address the parish's needs for the foreseeable future - installation of a permanent cooling system on a converted cold food pantry behind the senior center, which replaces a nearby old refrigerated truck trailer that was intended to be "temporary" when it was first installed 20 years ago.

Journeymen pipe fitters Mike Pitts, Bob Miller and apprentice Chris Gouin, all W.J. O'Neil employees, each volunteered their time to relocate the existing evaporator, installing a new condenser and putting in new wiring to keep the food storage locker area cold for years to come. Toiling after work and on weekends, they each put in 30-40 hours on the project.

"We're pretty fortunate, we have a good job and earn good money," Pitts said. "There are a lot of less-fortunate people out there, and the people at St. Pat's do a great job of helping them out. This is our way of giving something back to the community." Added Miller: "The church has been around a few years, and it needs some work. This is for a good cause, so I'm happy to help out."

Pipe Fitters Local 636 Business Manager Jim Lapham said the first time he had heard of St. Patrick's was when its executive director, Sister Mary Watson, was on the radio and mentioned the need for volunteers to repair their steam heating system.

"I talked to her because I thought she needed her boiler fixed," Lapham said. "But she told me, 'no, we need a new boiler.' Well that would have cost about $300,000. It turns out that Detroit Edison, which feeds them their steam, was threatening to turn off the supply, but they changed their mind, thank God.

"So we didn't have to find a new boiler, but she did have a whole list of things that needed to be done, and now I think that we're about at the end of the list. I'm afraid to ask if she's happy because she's probably going to find something else for us to do," Lapham joked.

She's happy. The entire senior center is happy.

"It was just Cadillac workmanship, we're ecstatic," said Jackie Brown, the senior center's office manager. Sister Mary was on vacation last week. "A lot of people think that money alone is the answer, but it isn't. We could never afford all the work they did. They gave so much of their time and effort to help us, and we're so grateful."

"The guys really did a great job, they devoted a whole weekend to getting the job done," said Local 636 BA Frank Wiechert. "It really shows how helpful union people care about their community."

Journeymen pipe fitters Mike Pitts, Bob Miller and apprentice Chris Gouin, all of Local 636 and W.J. O'Neil, stand in front of the cooling equipment they installed in a food pantry at the St. Patrick's Senior Center in Detroit.