Roofer on a Mission
The Roof Doctor brings hope and healing in Haiti
Anthony Day was once a reluctant roofer. The owner of The Roof Doctor—a roofing contractor based in Amelia, Ohio—Day essentially grew up in the industry, helping his father with his roofing business. Although Day initially resisted the idea of becoming a full-time roofer, destiny led to other plans. Despite his early misgivings, Day eventually realized that the profession that chose him had prepared him for his chosen calling: providing construction assistance in less-developed countries as part of outreach efforts organized through his church.
From an Early Age
Born into a roofing family, Day recalls spending time as a child on job sites with his father, who had begun a roofing business with his brothers. “Starting around the age of 8, most of my summers were filled with going to work with Dad,” he says. Day’s cousins were also there. “This was how we were able to hang out with our dads,” he says.
As time went on, Day’s responsibilities increased. “Over the years, I would spend summers cleaning up debris, carrying materials and learning the business,” he notes. However, taking over the business was never his plan. “As I got a bit older, I had dreams of anything and everything except becoming a roofer full time,” he says.
But fate would intervene. While Day was still in high school, his father’s company ran low on workers. Day faced a tough choice. “I made the decision to drop out of school and work full time,” he says.
For Day, the move was supposed to be temporary. “At 18, I earned a GED, thinking I would go to school and pursue another career,” he says. “But life happened, and I returned to the things I knew best—roofing and construction.”
Feeling the Pull
Day’s long experience in the field proved advantageous. “Before I was 19, I was a foreman running crews ranging in size from six to 10 people,” he says. “The business was natural for me.”
Despite his success, Day sought something different. “Things were going well,” he says. “I was young and had everything I ever wanted, except it was not the job I wanted for the rest of my life.”
However, Day was never able to break away from the family profession for long. “I seemed to keep getting pulled back in,” he says.
Hooked on a Mission
After getting married, Day and his wife, Lasha, joined a church that conducted mission trips. For their first mission, they traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “When we arrived, there was a need for tarping roofs,” Day says. “It was right up my alley!”
The experience would prove pivotal for Day, who realized just how much he wanted to continue doing service projects. “This is when my mindset started to change regarding a lot of things,” he says. “I was hooked on mission work.”
For his next mission, Day felt a calling to broaden his efforts and pursue international opportunities. Together with a group of close friends and church members, Day and Lasha ventured to Haiti, where they spent their anniversary helping to construct an orphanage. A month later, Day returned to Haiti alone to help complete the project in time for its grand opening. Although personally satisfying, the experience was difficult professionally for Day, who had just lost his longtime foreman.
Despite the challenges, “I had to go,” Day says. “It was a calling.” After a few more trips to Haiti, Day developed connections to local Haitians, and these connections led to subsequent visits to the Caribbean nation. “Many trips later, we were led to take over an orphanage,” Day says.
Building Hope
As their own children grew older, Day and Lasha stopped traveling to Haiti, preferring instead to pursue local charity work. “I had not been to Haiti for more than a year,” Day says, and he struggled over whether he had made the right decision. “I could not get the children, and the need of the Haitian people, off my mind,” he says.
But then one Sunday, Day and his family attended the services of a friend’s church. Fate again intervened, but this time in a way that Day would come to appreciate greatly.
“During morning announcements,” Day recalls, “the preacher said, ‘It’s a long shot, but we are looking for someone with a passport and construction knowledge who would be willing to go to Haiti in two weeks on a free ticket.’ ” The preacher’s long shot paid off, as Day ended up returning to Haiti for what was then his 10th visit.
As it turned out, the group that Day had joined was in Haiti to build churches, schools and orphanages. In two weeks, the group dug foundations by hand, placed concrete for floors and prepared walls.
To Day and the other volunteers, the buildings they were constructing appeared at first to be simple, utilitarian structures. But their importance to the locals became clear. “While watching children walk miles to be at church, it just began to stick with me,” Day says. “To me, it’s another building. But to the children, it’s a home. It’s hope.”
Finding His Calling
This awareness, along with his other experiences on the mission trip, would have a profound effect on Day. “Sitting on a roof in Haiti, it hit me,” he says. “The job I had hated, all the years I was trying to do something different, my talents, everything I never wanted to do, were the very things that put me there.”
The realizations did not stop there. “It was at this time that I heard it loud and clear,” Day says. “ ‘Jesus was a carpenter.’ ” In that moment, Day understood that he had to undertake a personal mission to help widows and orphans and spread the word of God.
But in order to fulfill this duty, Day knew he had to remain a full-time roofer and enlarge his business, so he could earn the resources needed to carry out his mission activities. “The job I had never wanted was the thing that put me in the mission field over and over,” he says. “I would always be pulled back, because it was what I was here to do. This was my calling.”
A Road Well Traveled
Over time, Day has made The Roof Doctor one of the top commercial, industrial and residential roofers throughout Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Southeastern Indiana. The company proudly returns a portion of its proceeds to missions, both local and international.
“As a business owner, I am blessed to have the time and schedule to be able to use my skills to help those in need,” Day says. For someone who began his professional life in a field not entirely of his choosing, Day realizes now that the path he took to reach his current position might not have been straightforward, but it was the road he needed to travel. As Day puts it, he started out in a “job that was never wanted,” but ended up with a “vision that would never die.”