By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
Against the backdrop of a national malaise that includes the longest government shutdown in United States history, dramatic federal funding cutbacks for human services, health care, and education, and deep-seated questioning of what it really means to act in the public good, the ongoing story of one local family provides a poignant example of how the powerful spirit of community and caring is still alive in small-town Vermont.
Vermont Standard readers first met the Pierce family back in late June of last year, when the family of five was desperately seeking an accessible, affordable home that could be readily adaptable for a child with profound special needs. The Pierces’ middle child, six-year-old Astraea, has STXBP1-Related Disorder, an extremely rare genetic condition that affects the way the synapses in her brain communicate, resulting in significant mobility issues and other challenges. The young girl is unable to sit unassisted, walk, or talk. She is deeply dependent on the ever-present love and tender care that her parents, sixth-generation Woodstock native Harlei Merriam Pierce, 32, her husband Melvin Pierce III, 33, from Plainfield, N.H., and siblings Jupiter, 13, and Astrophel, 3, lavish upon her.
The family’s housing search ended just over a year ago when the Pierces moved into an older home in need of renovation at a cost they could afford in Reading in mid-October 2024. They immediately began working with a variety of health care entities, non-profit human services organizations, and community groups on efforts to make their new-but-old home vastly more energy efficient and, particularly, more suitable to the challenges of tending to Astraea and her special needs.
The Pierce family is pictured atop the accessibility ramp outside their home in Reading. From left are mom Harlei Merriam Pierce, dad Melvin Pierce, and children Astraea, Jupiter, and Astrophel, in his brother’s arms. Courtesy of Harlei Pierce
No sooner were planning and construction for energy retrofitting efforts and the installation of an accessible ramp outside their new Reading home underway when another devastating medical blow struck the family: their beloved young Astraea, then a first-grader at Woodstock Elementary School (WES), where she’d been enrolled since pre-school, was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer on January 11. Ever the battler, although unable to express verbally what she is feeling, Astraea will commence her fifth round of chemotherapy treatments at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover next week, her mother Harlei said during an extended phone conversation on Monday afternoon.
Once the Pierces reconciled themselves with the latest challenges facing the family, Harlei and Melvin proceeded with concerted, community-funded efforts to make their home more compatible with caring for a child such as Astraea with such profound needs — and now with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis on top of all that. Local community organizations have contributed immeasurably to these efforts on behalf of the Pierce family.
Prior to beginning their search for a new home in early 2024, the Pierces were very happy in Woodstock, but as Astraea grew older, their two-bedroom mobile home was not large enough for Astraea’s special wheelchair and all the other equipment needed for her care. Because they lived in a flood zone, the door to the trailer was getting quite high and Astraea was getting too big to carry up and down the stairs. That’s when the Pierce family first connected with COVER Home Repair, a non-profit based in White River that provides urgent home repairs for income-qualifying homeowners at no charge. Harlei recounted that “because the mobile home was so high up, the ramp had to be really extensive. COVER was really awesome to work with.” The family also assembled a group of local volunteers and extended family members to build exactly the kind of ramp Astraea needed at the time.
As time went on, however, the Pierce family came to terms with the need to have a house much more suited to Astraea’s needs and, following a two-year search that included a community-based homeownership course, they set aside their fervent wishes to remain in Harlei’s hometown of Woodstock during “an incredibly tight housing market” and settled on the house in Reading, with its flat yard and a first-floor bathroom and bedroom for Astraea.
The early-1900s home, which Harlei said cost around $220,000, for which the family was able to obtain a mortgage, needed work. With assistance from the COVER Store in White River Junction, the Pierces purchased replacement doors and home goods at affordable prices, including a “beautiful $10 chandelier” that now hangs over the dining room table in their open living space, reported COVER Executive Director Helen Hong in a statement sent to the Standard last week. COVER also facilitated funding and construction of an outdoor accessibility ramp at the front of the Pierces’ new home and the installation of a roll-in shower for Astraea in the first-floor bathroom this past summer. The non-profit’s home repair director, John Heath, continues to consult with Harlei and Melvin on additional adaptations for the property.
Once they settled in Reading, the Pierces received support from The HUB, a volunteer project of the Woodstock Community Trust that provides a safety net to residents of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock. The HUB’s Tish Lewis connected the Pierces with financial assistance for electrical bills and heating assistance and also dropped off meals for the family, especially as Astraea’s health woes accelerated. During her early visits to Reading as another Vermont winter kicked in late last year, Lewis noted that the Pierce home was cold, drafty, and expensive to heat. She referred Harlei to the Reading Energy Committee for assistance. The volunteer town committee aims to weatherize one house in the community each winter, and this past year, they worked on the Pierces’ new abode after Bill Neukomm, a member of the municipal energy group, performed a site visit. Of note, Neukomm previously served for five years as the executive director of COVER, preceding Hong, underscoring the vital interconnectivity and interrelated funding needs and priorities of non-profit social service agencies in the region.
The work that COVER, the HUB, and the Reading Energy Committee have done and continue to do has enabled one family – deeply challenged financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually – to stay in their home and in schools in the neighboring community of Woodstock, where Harlei Merriam Pierce and her family have resided for six generations. Jupiter is a middle schooler at Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WHS/MS), Astrophel is attending pre-school at WES, and Astraea hopes to return to a second-grade classroom at the elementary school in Woodstock Village following a sixth (and hopefully final) round of chemotherapy early next year. Mom Harlei is a 2011 graduate of WUHS/MS. Marvin is a plumber and heating specialist who works with his father’s New Hampshire-based company, and Harlei hopes to return to part-time work if at all possible once Astraea’s condition stabilizes, as hoped in the middle of next year. Prior to taking on 24-hour-a-day care of Astraea and her family several years ago, Harlei was studying to become a hospice nurse. She’s now contemplating pursuing a career as a medical social worker – a path for which she’s been inexorably prepared by life’s circumstances.
“[Astraea] obviously has not been able to go to school much since January, but we do try to get her involved, like we were just in the [Woodstock] Halloween parade,” Harlei told the Standard this week. “I do try to make it to certain things with her so she can still be included in her class. My kids are the sixth generation in my family to go to Woodstock schools, and not only that, [Astraea] has been with the same kids since they were three- and four-year-olds — she started at the WES pre-school,” Pierce continued.
“All these kids are just so they’re so comfortable with her. They really, truly, honestly care about her,” Harlei added. “And so we knew, when we were looking for a house that we wanted to stay in the Woodstock schools — that was super important to us. We turned down houses we could have afforded in other districts: the family lineage thing is cool, but her social interactions with her peers are so important.” School choice was an important factor in the family’s settling in Reading, Harlei noted, even as she praised the nearby Reading Elementary School, which the children of many of the Pierces’ newfound acquaintances in Reading attend.
“We fought hard for this home and to stay in the [Woodstock] schools at the same time, and the support we received from the non-profits and from our neighbors represent the Vermont values that matter most,” Harlei Pierce said near the conclusion of this week’s heartfelt and deeply moving discussion. “I don’t want to share [our] story out of pity, but just to remind people how much community support and connection mean, especially for families like ours that face major medical and emotional challenges.
“I am so grateful for the kindness we’ve received, and I hope that our story can highlight the importance of keeping communities and the people within them connected and supported,” Astraea’s mom concluded, her voice laden with humanity.
To follow Astrea Pierce and her family’s ongoing journey of bravery and discovery, visit tinyurl.com/mr37wmzp.
