LAHAINA, Hawaii — Soon after smoke began blowing through her Kahoma subdivision neighborhood, Ivory Gilmore fled with her children and dog and headed for her mother’s place in Kahului.

The usual 40-minute drive took four hours, but they got there.

A return to normalcy has taken much longer. Tuesday, however, was a special day in the years long rebuilding and recovery process.

Thirty Los Angeles Rams rookies assisted 24 Habitat for Humanity Maui workers to raise wooden wall frames at Gilmore’s property on Komo Mai Street in the center of Lahaina town. It was one of 10 properties that Habitat built a home in the area just a few years before the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires destroyed thousands of structures and killed more than 100 people.

[Note: See below for more photos of the Lahaina home rebuild project with the Los Angeles Rams.]

Rams players donned Habitat for Humanity shirts and hard hats and threw themselves into the assignment, which came about with the aid of an established a tie between the LA Habitat branch and the NFL franchise.

The Rams opened this week’s minicamp — dubbed the MauiCamp in conjunction with the Hawaii Tourism Authority — with a one-hour on-field training session at War Memorial Stadium in Wailuku. There, former Rams lineman Andrew Whitworth announced the Rams will donate a new locker room to Lahainaluna High School to be ready in time for the 2025 fall football season.

Then the rookies boarded a bus for the west side of the island.

Chris Paul Jr., a linebacker from Cordele, Ga., who was a fifth-round draft pick out of Ole Miss, wanted to set a workmanlike tone for the rookies.

That meant slipping into the role of site foreman for a day. He learned how to use a table saw and nail gun.

“I was yelling ‘watch your feet!’ Because I’m the supervisor of the whole thing, over the rookies,” Paul told Spectrum News. “So it’s my job to make sure that everybody gets home safe. I just take that very seriously at the end of this day. … I just made the orders and they got them completely.”

The surreal sight of burly linemen lifting lumber caused Gilmore to realize “that I actually get to be in a house soon,” she said. “I lived in apartments for so long that it was it was such a change, and such a beautiful change, to live in a home (when we moved there in 2021), and now to go back to that … (it means) okay, we’re getting there. We’re almost there again.”

Before the fires, it was a safe neighborhood where Gilmore didn’t worry about her kids playing outside until dark. Neighbors knew and trusted each other.

Several homes along the street are in various stages of construction. Most lots are still vacant. One across the street from Gilmore’s lot is about 70% completed.

“At least I know that we’re going to have it again, you know, in a different way, but we’re still gonna have it again,” Gilmore said of the neighborhood.

Habitat is rebuilding homes in the area at cost for about $350,000 each, said the Maui branch’s executive director Matt Bachman, who supervised matters Tuesday.

Bachman said the Habitat team had plenty of foreknowledge of the Rams’ visit and made sure the work was ready to be done upon their arrival.

On the bus ride there, he tried to give the players an idea of the emotional heft of they would experience in a ghost of a neighborhood.

Homes in the Kahoma subdivision of Lahaina in various stages of rebuild. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

The players spent about 90 minutes on site.

“They were very, very hands on,” Bachman said. “When one of them picked up a nail gun, someone gasped, because they thought … ‘What’s Coach (Sean) McVay going to think? But they went right to it. They stood up, I think, eight walls today, and got us a week or two ahead of schedule of where we would have been.”

Several people associated with the Rams visit noted the connection between what Los Angeles experienced in January with the destructive Palisades fire and what Lahaina experienced.

“No doubt,” Paul said of the shared trauma. “First and foremost, I want to let everybody know that, we want to send out condolences to the families that lost anything in the fires, and to families who are still currently suffering. I just want them to know that we understand what they’re going through. And, man, this, this task right here today, it was just special. You know, us being able to come all the way out here to Hawaii and give back [the way] we did the same as well as in California, but us being able to come here and do this and in Hawaii means a lot.”

Lahainaluna football coach Dean Rickard, a lifelong Lahaina resident, noted that it’s human nature for tragedies to fade from memory over time. He expressed gratitude to the Rams for not forgetting about it.

“By them taking the time to come here and still taking the time to actually go out and assist in this rebuilding, it sends the message that we still got a lot of work to do,” Rickard said. “It’s very important, keeping that message going. That’s what we’re doing. I think I speak on behalf of the entire West Side community, my community, (I) just appreciate everything that we’ve been receiving from this organization.”

The Rams minicamp continued Wednesday with a team session open to spectators at War Memorial Stadium. The field was emblazoned at midfield with a Los Angeles team logo customized in a wave motif and “RAMS” was painted into the end zones.

Rams rookies raised a wooden wall frame. (Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Rams)

A foundation of a home has been laid at the property next door from where the Rams rookies went to work with Habitat for Humanity Maui. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

 

A Rams rookie posed with a Habitat for Humanity Maui worker. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

Rams rookies autographed a jersey and Habitat for Humanity Maui banner. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

A Rams rookie wore a hard hat on the job. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

Habitat for Humanity Maui workers cooled off after the Rams departed. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

A pink “Lahaina Strong” truck was parked in the vicinity. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

The wooden wall frames raised by the Los Angeles Rams players. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

Habitat for Humanity Maui is working on several homes in the area. (Spectrum News/Brian McInnis)

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.