When his family experienced the devastation of a house fire last August, Texas County resident Robert Turner went through the same gamut of emotions familiar to all burnout victims.
There was the sadness, the confusion, the frustration, and the fear.
“I was walking around in a haze wondering what I was going to do now,” Turner said.
Two of Turner’s three children were in the Hightown area house when the fire broke out. The oldest, Shania, saw smoke and pulled her younger brother Brandon to safety. But she didn’t see her even younger sister Kayla, and thought she was in trouble, unaware that the youngster was away with Turner and his wife Angela.
“She went back in looking for her and didn’t find her,” Turner said. “She was crying when we pulled into the driveway. Then she saw that Kayla was with us and she was elated.”
But since that hot summer day when fire abruptly pulled the rug out from under their lives, the Turner family’s outlook has taken an unexpected and dramatic turn for the better. Led by the combined efforts of a long-time county contractor, representatives of several area churches and numerous other local individuals, their home is well on its way to being rebuilt.
The unexpected part? The labor was all free.
With Robert providing the material, a communal project unfolded to rebuild the house atop the existing foundation and utilizing existing concrete walls. On a Saturday in late October, a throng of 25 workers descended on the construction site at once.
“There were so many hands,” Turner said. “There were almost too many people and not enough for them all to do.”
The local contractor heading up the charitable project chooses to remain anonymous. But he said that after witnessing the fire scene in August, he was overcome by one thought on his way home.
“I just kept thinking, ‘I can’t take their money,’” he said. “I had never met them before, but watching them go through the house and trying to talk about it, you could tell it was just eating them up. They aren’t charity cases – they both work – but I just knew this was something I had to do.”
“He told us ‘you need a blessing,’” Turner said. “‘You buy the material, I’ll provide the laborers to get it in the dry.’ That’s all I wanted, because my wife and I will do the rest.”
Turner’s wife Angela said the reaction to her family’s situation has been beyond anything she could have imagined.
“It’s been amazing how supportive the community has been,” she said. “We’re not even native to the area, but people have taken us in and treated us like we are.”
Since the big volunteer day, Turner and the contractor have continued to receive assistance from a handful of workers, still at no charge.
“I’m still trying to figure out whether this is real,” Robert said. “But I haven’t smashed a thumb yet, so I guess I’m not awake yet.
“But we’ve been awe struck by this. Our jaws just dropped when they told us about it. I was like, ‘I don’t think we deserve that.’ But the Lord is good and He does great things, and I’m very thankful for everyone who has been out here.”
He told us, ‘You need a blessing.’”