Fire can’t destroy love

By Patricia Hunt
Published: July 25, 2008

I understand why people’s picture of hell is fire. I watched with fascination and horror as my neighbor’s house burned for hours after being struck by lightning. During a thunderstorm on Tuesday sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight I heard a tremendous explosion. I knew something nearby had been hit, but I didn’t know what. When I went up to bed, an upstairs back door had blown open, and I smelled smoke. I began searching for its source. Eventually I saw the roof of my neighbor’s house blazing. One of the grand old dames of Beverly Street was going up in smoke. 
As badly as I felt for the current owners, I was glad Dot Payne was no longer alive to see it. According to neighbor Karen Lynne Johnston, Dr. and Mrs. Payne bought the house from the Witz family who had owned it since East European immigrant and merchant Isaac Witz bought it in 1878. It was the Witz family who took the former Methodist parsonage and added on to the back as well as the top, transforming it into something very like the house it is today.
Dot Payne loved that house with a passion. She didn’t get to renovate the interior during her last years, but she had replaced the roof (after a fight with Historic Staunton Foundation when she insisted that she could not duplicate its original slate). With help from family, the widowed Dot Payne was able to stay there until she died in the house she loved. When current owners Ellen and Lou Boden bought it, they became only the third family to own it since 1878. They have done a tremendous amount of work inside, and are worthy successors to the devoted previous owners. 
I watched it burn until about 5 in the morning. My own house smelled of smoke. My eyes stung and my throat felt a little scratchy. I hate to see anyone’s home burn. Although I know full well that houses are, after all, just things, our things do come to be an extension of us. People painted on their cave walls, and when we find their paintings, we are thrilled; it is as if we have found a little piece of them. We keep up the houses of Thomas Jefferson and Elvis. It is not irrational to think that by going to Monticello and Graceland we come just a little closer to the people who inhabited them.
When someone loses a house, a part of those people is gone. Fire is an especially violent way to lose a house. Home is transformed into heat, light and smoke. I have known three people who have survived house fires that happened when they were home, and all found it traumatizing. One vowed never to live in anything but a one-story dwelling so she could jump out a window if she needed to.
Despite the events of Tuesday night, I think the Witz house has good fortune in its very bones. It is a blessed place. This is not its first fire. According to historical records, a “substantial fire” damaged it and the house next door in 1869, but the house was not abandoned. It was loved back into shape to go another 139 years before lightning threatened to destroy it again. Ellen and Lou Boden are vowing to restore it. That makes it twice blessed. From what I can find out, throughout its existence it has been treasured. And with its roof mostly gone, its dormers charred, and water and smoke damage throughout, it is still treasured. I should be so fortunate when I grow old and scarred.
A raging fire can destroy a 150 years of labor and care in short order; creation takes a lot more time and effort than destruction. But human beings are a stubborn lot, and often they simply aren’t willing to let destruction have the last word. On Wednesday I saw three people climb stairs to what used to be the attic, stand under open sky and survey the damage. I think they were plotting creation and restoration standing there in the ruins. Grand old lady of East Beverly, you got lucky again.
Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.