Gifted Hands, Hearts, and Minds
Olivia Hawthorne is spreading joy in North Memphis with her landscaping business.
By Kenny Halt
Keeping the streets clean is hard work. It isn’t the most glamorous job in the world. For some, spending a humid summer day in Memphis picking up litter and illegal dumping while cars whiz by is the type of job they’d rather pass on to try to find something else. For the CRA, it’s the Block Crew program. For the contractors who perform it, it’s something they are proud to do and a brotherhood that they’ve created. There’s a solidarity and respect in being those who do the work that others don’t want to do. From 2021-2024, the CRA’s roster of Block Crew contractors remained the same five contractors. But in March 2025, Olivia Hawthorne would change that.
In life, there are certain people that you can help but want to see win. It is often those who show kindness and those who go above and beyond. Hawthorne and the employees of her business, Gifted Hands Contracting, are those kinds of people.
For Olivia, she has fond childhood memories accompanying her father to job sites to watch him work as a brick-mason left her with a dream of becoming a contractor one day herself. However, we aren’t always in a position to chase our dreams. After a long and esteemed career in logistics at FedEx, Olivia retired. While retirement was nice, this dream — like most things we want but did not get – continued to weigh on her mind. In 2021, Olivia decided the weight of not knowing would linger no longer. She would not go through life without having at least tried to do what her father had inspired her to do. Gifted Hands Contracting was born, and a battle of building something from the ground up and finding a way to stand out from those who have done the same work for perhaps decades longer.
Approaching the end of their first season with the CRA, Gifted Hands has more than stood out from the very beginning. The Block Crew Program, already well established, was not in need of new contractors. However, Hawthorne, a resident of the Uptown TIF, left such an impression on the CRA staff that they went to work to see if there was any possibility of bringing them on. Unfortunately, it appeared the result would likely be no. The best, the CRA was able to offer Hawthorne was as follows:
- A small cluster of streets and alleys that, on their own, may not justify the time and commitment that would be required to perform the work on a monthly basis.
- A desire to provide Gifted Hands with more work if it were to become available
- An inability to promise that that would happen regardless of how well they performed
An offer that many would understandably decline. Olivia Hawthorne accepted.
Gifted Hands Contracting, pulling upon scripture, bears the slogan “Strengthen My Hands for the Work.” Work began on April 1st, and soon thereafter the strength of those hands was shown. It‘d prove nearly indistinguishable from the work of a seasoned block crew veteran. When small jobs like filling holes and clearing brush became available, Gifted Hands often got those jobs. While in the world of contracting, the success of another business is almost always seen as unwanted competition – the genuine and caring personalities of Olivia and her crew would prompt an exception.
Not only have residents quickly embraced Gifted Hands, so have its peers. Olivia recalls at least three separate Block Crews lending her a helping hand when she needed it. May it be by providing extra hands or support with equipment. It is not lost on the contractors that helping Gifted Hands to grow could mean a little less income for them, but that hasn’t dissuaded them from being supportive of a business owner they genuinely want to see succeed. Beyond a helping hand, Hawthorne found a quick friend and advocate Dennis Bolden, owner-operator of Portrait Services. Bolden has served as the Block Crew contractor for Uptown Greenlaw since the creation of the program in 2020. He takes great pride in the work he’s put into this neighborhood and the changes he’s seen during that time. However, months into the 2025 Block Crew season, having gotten to know Ms. Hawthorne, he made the following request of CRA: “If there’s any way you can come close to supplementing my work, I’d be willing to take a pay cut so that Ms. Hawthorne can have her home neighborhood. I want her to have it.”
Before a decision could be made, the Block Crew Program launched in the Binghampton TIF. Bolden was able to take on a new challenge, and Olivia was able to receive a massive jolt to her workload and business while getting to serve the community she calls home. Olivia Hawthorne took an opportunity that few would. She bet on herself and paid off.
Welcome to the Block Crew Brotherhood, Olivia.