Potential buyers of manufactured homes were disgruntled at the restrictions in the Lawrence city code. All mobile homes built after 1976 were required to comply with construction and safety standards, and Lawrence code allowed mobile home parks to be developed within any residential zoning district of the city, provided the parks met density and floodplain requirements. However, one resident wrote to the Lawrence City Commission with the complaint that the regulations were evidence of “discrimination and prejudice” against manufactured homes.

Several men from St. John the Evangelist and Corpus Christi churches converged on the home of Blanche Perkins to repair her leaky roof. Blanche’s husband had been a janitor at St. John’s before his death a few years earlier, and when word spread among her friends that she was facing some high roof-repair estimates, they agreed to donate their labor at no charge.