Coming Through the Fire

The Day Dad’s Business Burned

I remember the sound of the fire siren.

It was a Saturday afternoon in the summer of ’65. My twin brother and I had just graduated from high school and were looking forward to heading off to college in Kentucky that fall. We were home for the weekend between two Christian summer camps.

The fire house and Dad’s business were a few blocks down Wood Street from our home. When the volunteer firemen heard the siren, they would hop in their cars and race past our house on their way to the fire. When our neighbor joined us to watch what direction the fire truck would go, she said, “I think the smoke is coming from your father’s store!” It was. Jack and I ran down the street and watched the building go up in flames.

The auto parts business my father and two other Vets started when they came back from WWII had outgrown their original building and moved into a hulking, two story frame structure that had once been the local feed store. When my brother and I swept the floors, we would still find bits of grain working their way through the wooden floors. In those days before air-conditioning in Western Pennsylvania, the doors in the front and back of the building were open to let the summer breeze blow through. It created the perfect wind tunnel for the fire that started in the shop at the back and swept through the building in no time.

By the time the sun set, the fire had been put out and the building was a smoking pile of rubble. About a third of the building survived including the smoke-filled offices on the front of the second floor. My cousin, home from the Marines, watched over it for the night.

Now, What?

Dad wasn’t there to watch his business burn. He was among 4,700 Methodist Men who were gathered at Perdue University in Indiana. By the time they got word to him (there were no cell phones back then!), it was too late for him to get home that evening. I now wonder what he went through that night while he waited until Sunday morning to catch a flight to Pittsburgh. A friend with a private plane picked him up to bring in back. His first sight of the disaster was looking down from above as his friend circled over the town.

It was Sunday morning. While Dad was flying home, we were in our pew at the First Methodist Church just the way we were every Sunday. Where else would we be?

I don’t think I was with him when he arrived at the smoking remains of his life’s work. I wonder what was going through his mind when someone snapped the picture of him sitting in his chair in the smoke-saturated remains of his office. (Don’t miss the plastic pocket protector and the argyle socks!) I’m amazed (and somewhat embarrassed!) that I never asked what was thinking.

Dad went straight to work. They picked up what was left of their records and their stocks and moved back into the building in which they had started. Within a few weeks, Clarion Automotive Supply Company was back in business. That’s just what those guys in “The Greatest Generation” did! They grew up in the Great Depression, survived the war, and kept on going. He faced the fire the way he faced everything that came his way during the last 15 years of his life, including a heart valve replacement and two bouts with cancer. He faced it with his unwavering faith in God and his determination to keep on going.

60 Years Later…

Life went on. Jack and I went on to Asbury College in the fall. Mom went back to teaching school to help put us through. Dad rebuilt the business. He died when he was 59. Mom lived to be 95. And here I am, 60 years after the fire, remembering what they went through, grateful for their relentless determination and persistent faith, and passing on the story of the way they came through.

Embedded in my memory of that summer is an old hymn we sang at Wesley Woods. (Youth camps actually sang hymns back then!)

That cause can nev­er be lost nor stayed
Which takes the course of what God has made;
And is not trust­ing in walls and tow­ers,
But slow­ly grow­ing from seeds to flow­ers.

Each no­ble serv­ice that men have wrought
Was first con­ceived as a fruit­ful thought;
Each wor­thy cause with a fu­ture glo­ri­ous
By qui­et­ly grow­ing be­comes vic­tor­ious.

Thereby it­self like a tree it shows:
That high it reach­es, as deep it grows;
And when the storms are its branch­es shak­ing,
It deep­er root in the soil is tak­ing.

Be then no more by a storm dis­mayed,
For by it the full grown seeds are laid;
And though the tree by its might it shat­ters,
What then, if thou­sands of seeds it scat­ters?

I need the reminder of that kind of determination and the faith to keep on going right now. Perhaps you do, too.

Grace and peace,

Jim