Jerral Hancock was sleeping on his mother’s floor, working at Wendy’s, and trying to figure out how to make a better life for his newborn son when he decided to enlist in the Army. Today, now with both a son and a daughter, he’s trying to answer that question under a very different set of circumstances: How can he be a good dad and husband after the bomb that exploded under his tank in 2007 left him paralyzed below the chest and with only one arm?

Jerral doesn’t have to answer that question alone. The Gary Sinise Foundation and Operation All The Way Home raised money to build Jerral and his family a specially designed “smart home” suitable for his wheelchair.

While the new accommodations couldn’t return Jerral’s arm, the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University just might be able to. Earlier this year, the same team of neuro and robotics researchers that fitted Johnny Matheny with a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm flew to the Hancock home in Palmdale, California, to try an even bolder experiment: Could they make for Jerral, who’s dealing not just with an amputation but also a spinal cord injury, a prosthetic arm he can actually use?

On May 6, 2014, the students break ground on the property, where they’re also building a house for Hancock’s mom and stepfather, Stacie and Dirrick Benjamin. It’s a community celebration: dozens of residents, young and old, some of them clutching American flags.

An older man spots Hancock and grins.

“Jerral, brother, how are you, sir?”

“Still breathing. Can’t complain.”

Goodreau is emotional as the crowd grows. “What a journey,” she says into a microphone on a stage set up between two construction trucks. The students “were determined to run a marathon at spring speed because Jerral had been in that house for six years, and they thought six years was too long.”

Kaelyn Edwards, 17, smiles at Hancock from the microphone.

“We gave up the summer of our senior year,” she says, “but Jerral’s sacrifice was bigger.”

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By this February, the wooden frames of the two houses stand tall. There are construction workers on site – they’ve been working weekends and nights, with lights strapped to their heads – and sawdust on the floor as the students step inside Hancock’s house. They’re armed with markers to sign the bare plywood. Their messages will be painted over, but their words will remain there forever.

Goodreau signs the top of a window frame, the words of “Amazing Grace”: “Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

When Nicole Skinner, who is now in college, sees how far the house has come, tears run down her face.

“This is going to be a real house,” she whispers. “Like, who does that but us?”

She’s grown close to Hancock in the nearly two years since he spoke to her class. A shy foster child with a tough upbringing, she has come to consider her fellow OATH students and Hancock her family.

In purple marker, she writes on Hancock’s wall: “You deserve this, Hancock! . It’s a simple act of kindness that can make a difference. Keep your head up, J.”

As the house has raised, so have Hancock’s spirits. He’s seen the students grow, and he tells them often he’s proud of them.

He’s also fallen in love. Adriana Gonzalez, a military daughter with a sarcastic sense of humor on par with his, came to many of the OATH events, where they talked and talked. Last fall, he proposed. She said yes.

They move quietly through the house, reading the students’ messages, sunlight streaming through the wooden framing. She puts her hand on his shoulder.

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Disabled veterans call the day they survive their injuries their Alive Day. On his latest Alive Day – and his 29th birthday – Jerral Hancock goes home.

His family pulls onto the property, escorted by sheriff’s deputies and flag-bearing Patriot Guard motorcycle riders. Dozens of people line the driveway, cheering in the hot desert sun.

A white-haired Navy veteran leads the crowd in prayer: “Bless these houses and put lots of love in them, so they’ll turn into homes.” Someone holds up the infant son of the local contractor who led construction – he’s wearing a camouflage OATH onesie.

Hancock’s new handicap-accessible house has automatic doors, lights and blinds that can be controlled with a tablet computer – and wide doorways.

He steers his chair into his son’s Army-green bedroom, where Julius waves to him with both arms from the top of his new bunk bed.

“Look, I’m a private!” Julius says, mimicking a soldier.

Anastasia runs into her bright blue bedroom, and jumps on her new bed, with its Disney “Frozen” bedspread. She’s so excited: In the past, whenever she wanted to hear a bedtime story, she’d go to her dad’s room, listen to the story, and return to hers to go to sleep.

Now, her dad will be able to read her stories in her own bedroom.