One year after the cast and crew of ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ visited Cecil County, homeowner Renee Luther shares how the lives of her and her family will never be the same.

Rock Run Road follows the gentle contours of rural Cecil County, past frame houses, farms, and woods to the ranch where for twenty-six years Renee Luther has run Freedom Hills, a nonprofit therapeutic riding program for students with mental and physical disabilities.

It has been one year since Ty Pennington, the cool and compassionate host of the ABC-TV hit series “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” knocked on the riding instructor’s Port Deposit door and uttered the trademark greeting she had prayed for: “Good morning, Luther family!”

The “Makeover” team transformed the ramshackle Rolling Hills Ranch into a state-of-the-art riding center. Still, on this day, the ranch’s rhythms and rituals suggest a way of life lived for its own sakeÑnot in the pursuit of anything grandiose.

Luther’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Ellie, grooms a paint mare named Mesa in preparation for an advanced riding lesson. Through translucent roofing panels, sun streams into the remodeled barn, stacked to the rafters with hay bales. Bill Cady, a recently hired maintenance man, repairs fencing with the help of an AmeriCorps volunteer. Assistant Vickie Hucker pores over the mail while her grown daughter, Abigail, a riding regular since she was a toddler, keeps her company.

Suddenly, Renee Luther appears, charging the ranch’s easygoing ambience with frenetic energy to the delight of her dogs, Kiara and Mayleen. Luther is a tall, forthright figure in dark-gray riding britches, blue polo shirt, and jodhpur ankle boots. She wears her hair in a restrained shag style and no makeup masks her open face.

A multi-tasking whirlwind, Luther seems able to answer her mooing phone, consult with Hucker, and quote Scripture from Philippians while surveying her peaceable kingdom.

Luther leads a visitor to her sprawling, stone-veneer home, built on a rise that overlooks Rolling Hills Ranch, with its barn, indoor riding ring, and horses happily basking in the October sun. “I asked for a small rancher and He gave me a castle,” says Luther, forty-eight. “What an awesome God we serve.”

Until Pennington came knocking, it had been a dispiriting year for Luther, Ellie, and her son, Alex. The previous spring, her husband, Carl, had died of liver cancer. The Luthers’ home across the street from the ranch was falling apart.

Most worrisome, both Freedom Hills and the for-profit Rolling Hills Ranch riding program for able-bodied students faced an uncertain future. The ranch’s finances were shaky. The decrepit barn begged for restoration. Luther faced competition from nearby riding schools that could afford to build indoor rings and operate year-round.

True to the hit series’ heart-tugging formula, Pennington and a jolly cast of landscapers, designers, and builders came to Luther’s rescue just in time.

Whisked away to Italy, in keeping with the program’s fairy tale format, Luther and her children toured Rome, Venice, and Florence while 1,500 subcontractors, vendors, and volunteers labored around the clock on “Extreme Makeover’s” largest build to date.

Under the supervision of Belcamp, Md., developer Clark Turner Signature Homes, one team toiled on the barn and the indoor ring while another constructed the home. Within 104 hours, the project, supported by donations of food and materials from dozens of sponsors, was complete.

Instead of the modest, ranch-style house Luther had requested, though, she returned from Italy to a 4,600-square-foot mansion worth nearly $1 million. The empathetic Pennington had known all along what she had not dared to ask for. “Ty figured it out,” she says.

Since “Extreme Makeover” aired in January, Luther’s clientele have grown, including residents of a local nursing home and the Perry Point VA Medical Center. A local alcohol and drug treatment program also has expressed interest.

The immaculate riding facility is ready for everyone. Across the hall from Luther’s new office, a room equipped with donated weights and exercise balls allows clients to work with physical therapists. The “Extreme” crew also expanded the riding center’s kitchen and updated the accessible bathroom.

It is now much easier to move around in the refurbished barn, where twenty-six horses board, including ten belonging to Luther and her daughter. In the gleaming tack room, well-buffed saddles for each horse hang from designated pegs. Next door, the enclosed 7,000-square-foot riding ring, surfaced with a blend of sand, felt, and ground-up tires, guarantees that Luther’s enterprise is weatherproof.

Rolling Hills’ acclaim has spread far beyond Cecil County. Curiosity seekers often arrive unannounced at the ranch, eager to meet Luther and tour her new home and riding complex. Churches and civic groups around the country have invited her to give speeches. Program volunteers, always sorely needed, have multiplied.

When the “Extreme Makeover” episode featuring Luther aired recently in Sweden, several viewers sent well wishes and one asked for work. (She couldn’t afford to hire him.) Another rider came from Pittsburgh to volunteer and a Virginia family spent a weekend helping Luther and taking lessons. The obliging host puts visitors up in a luxurious guestroom.

It has become routine for reality programs to confer celebrity upon folks not otherwise destined for fame. Luther, for one, has adapted comfortably to the attention, taking advantage of her public status to keep both riding programs afloat.

Luther does not regard international recognition “so much as a personal victory as one for the program and the riders,” says Suzette Jackson, a
good friend and frequent Freedom Hills volunteer. “For years, people didn’t even know the program was there.”

To a large degree, Luther’s life has not really changed. The accomplished dressage rider still rises at 6 a.m. She still mucks out stalls. She still worries about paying the bills, particularly because of her new home’s soaring property taxes and propane costs. Last winter, Luther’s efforts to keep the thermostat at sixty degrees failed when Ellie’s friends claimed the home was too cold.

The “Extreme Makeover” experience didn’t change Luther so much as it “helped to reinforce her basic beliefs,” Jackson says. “She has always been a very strong, religious person, and the makeover made her realize, ‘Hey I’ve been doing the right thing, and God has rewarded me,’” Jackson says.

Nor has Luther, who moved to Rolling Hills Ranch when she was two, taken her good fortune for granted, says Jackson, who lives in Havre de Grace. “She has risen to the occasion. You read some stories about ‘Makeover’ homes that a year later are in foreclosure. She’s pretty smart about what her expenses are.”

Around the country, other “Extreme Makeover” fairy tales have taken a sad turn. Last year, a Georgia family selected for an “Extreme Makeover” nearly lost their home in a foreclosure after using it as collateral for a $450,000 loan. In October, a Florida woman made news when she could not afford to pay fines for various code violations cited at another home created by the television series.

Clark Turner will not allow Rolling Hills Ranch to suffer the same fate. The builder has stepped in with significant contributions to offset her expenses, Luther says.

“We’ve been giving her money every year that helps her with her taxes, insurance, and utilities,” Clark Turner says. “The idea was for her to spend her time taking care of all those kids and teaching them riding and not have those worries.” Turner declines to give a figure for the expenses he covers for Luther.

To make ends meet, though, the entrepreneurial Luther continues to run a summer riding and Bible day camp, plans to open a bed and breakfast, and to lease her lofty living room for “princess parties” and other events tailored to little girls. Future fundraisers for Freedom Hills include an open house and an annual auction.

While Rolling Hills riding students pay for lessons, Luther requests an optional donation from her Freedom Hills clients. Luther never turns therapeutic students away if they cannot afford to contribute.

Around the country, other “Extreme Makeover” fairy tales have taken a sad turn. Earlier this year, a Georgia family selected for an “Extreme Makeover” nearly lost their home in a foreclosure after using it as collateral for a $450,000 loan.

Look up,” Luther says, pointing to the yellow, blue, and green stained-glass skylight illuminating the front hall. Beyond, an open floor plan and vaulted ceilings create an aura of palatial grandeur. “When I first came in the house, I felt like such a princess,” she says. Luther delights in the kitchen’s recessed lighting, the dog baths, the Jacuzzi, and the thousands of dollars’ worth of furnishings donated by the series’ sponsors. Luther lacks the heart to toss the lush flower arrangements that greeted her family upon entering her new home. Clusters of dead roses remain on the rim of her fancy bathtub and on a dresser in the master bedroom, the sanctuary that Luther calls “Ty’s secret room.”

Portraits of Luther’s favorite horses, photographed by Pennington, himself, ring her bedroom walls. Among them is a fetching shot of her beloved Giver. “I pulled him out of his mommy’s behind,” Luther declares.

Upstairs, a collection of “pretty metal” guitars embellish Ellie’s room, in tribute to her love of heavy metal Christian bands. Underwear, snowboard boots, and other debris mark the turf of sixteen-year-old Alex. Courtesy of the “Makeover” team, the aspiring aviator’s bedroom boasts a mini replica of a vintage bomber across from his bed, large enough to curl up in.

Outside, Luther’s cats, Bubbles and Gray Fang, prowl the premises, as Luther strides across a rear patio equipped with a gleaming gas grill donated by Sears. Beyond, in the backyard, the “Extreme” team built a gazebo and garden in memory of Luther’s husband.

Luther returns to the barn, where Ashley Harris soon arrives for her weekly therapeutic riding lesson. The seven-year-old has cerebral palsy and does not walk or speak. On a ledge built for this purpose, Stephanie Harris hoists her daughter from a wheelchair up to Luther, who sits astride a patient horse named Ziggy.

Ashley leans against Luther, who corrects the girl’s posture as another instructor leads them around the indoor ring in serpentine loops. The ride stretches out Ashley’s legs, improves her balance, and simulates the motion of walking. As she rides Ziggy around the ring, her mother by her side, Ashley’s eyes dance with pleasure.

When the little girl leaves, Luther turns to the group riding class she will instruct in the outdoor ring. There will be no time for dinner in her extravagant kitchen as into the evening Luther leaps from one task to another. Her cheeseburger lunch with Ellie and Alex will see her through.

It will be 9 p.m. before Luther can claim personal time. Then, she will saddle Carousel and put the gray thoroughbred mare through her paces. Finally, Luther will be able to sink into the mare’s cadence and briefly leave her whirlwind life behind for an hour of therapeutic riding in the ring beside her new home.

Stephanie Shapiro writes from Baltimore.