Historic houses damaged by trees

Two long-standing structures, both beloved by multiple generations, were damaged in a storm which raced through Jackson County just after midnight Tuesday morning.

About 12:45 a.m. Tuesday, a loud noise startled Greg Tidwell out of a deep sleep. His wife, Sherry, was already awake. She looked at her husband and said, “I think a tree just came through the roof.”

The two leapt out of bed and walked down the short hallway to the next room of their home on Hummingbird Lane near Bascom. When they looked up, they saw a tree trunk and branches peeking through broken rafters that jutted out from a gaping hole in the ceiling. They checked the rest of the house, and saw more of the same in three other rooms. The tree had snapped off about mid-way down its trunk, and fallen through the roof in two bedrooms, the living room and the dining area. Only the kitchen and their bedroom were spared.

They and other family members worked through the night clearing the inside of their home, safeguarding some valuable belongings, and figuring out what to do next.

After daybreak, Tidwell walked around the outside of the home his grandfather built when his father was just a little boy. Not given to sentiment, Tidwell still felt a lump in his throat when he looked around at the destruction. He finds it hard to accept that he might not be able to fix all that’s broken, but he’s planning to try.

His mother, Luverne Tidwell, remembers how Greg’s father, Hubert Tidwell, used to talk about the time the house was built.

“He was about seven years old, “Luverne Tidwell said of her husband, now deceased. “He used to tell me how he remembered bringing the timber to his daddy (also named Hubert). It was special thing to him, spending that time with his father.”

It took the elder Tidwell five years to build the house.

When the younger Hubert grew up and started courting Luverne, she bonded with her future in-laws over the dinner table there, and with her future husband doing chores together.

“When I tell this, some people laugh,” Luverne said. “But I just loved helping him feed the cows.”

After she and Hubert married in the mid-1950s, they lived in the house with the elder Tidwells for about a year. They didn’t move far when they did leave; just across the road.

“He always loved this place, came here every day after work, even after we moved away. It meant so much to him,” Luverne said.

When Greg and his siblings came along, the whole family spent time there. After they grew up, the grandfather expanded his dairy business on the property to include his son Hubert, and Greg’s brother, William. He named it the Triple T dairy farm in honor of his partnership with the younger generations.

Greg’s parents eventually moved to Marianna, and Greg moved into the old home as an adult in 1985. Wife Sherry joined him in 1994. Together, they raised three sons in the house.

Their grandchildren are now toddlers, and visit the house often. Sherry shudders to think of what might have happened if the storm had been on a weekend. The youngsters might have been visiting, she said, and would have been playing or sleeping in one of the rooms damaged in the storm. She’s grateful that, if it had to happen, it happened when it did.

Although the tree destroyed the computer that was in their room and most of the toys they had stashed there, she says those items are replaceable and that, in perspective, it’s not something to grieve over. She’s just glad that the tree didn’t destroy Luverne’s heirloom chifferobe and a couple of treasured vases that belonged to her grandmother. The furniture and the vases are at least 100 years old.

Greg, too, has found a way to look on the situation positively.

“I hate to see the house the way it is; it hit me a little bit this morning,” he said. “But then when you think you have it bad, just look at the news. There’s always someone worse off than you are.”

As the Tidwells tried to figure out how they’ll recover from this crisis, Lee Miller was across the county in Graceville trying to deal with his own storm-related troubles.

The Jackson County school superintendent, Miller had to let his second-in-command deal with the situation at the administrative office while he waited for an insurance adjustor and picked up debris from the office his father and grandfather once shared. It’s located on the Miller family property near Lee Miller’s home.

He heard a crash Monday night, and wondered what it was. Soon after, firefighters came knocking on his door trying to find out who owned the building on the corner. It was the office, and a huge oak tree had fallen in on it. The tree is an estimated six to eight feet in diameter and is probably 100 years old, Miller said. He had other kids in the neighborhood used to play around it in their childhood, he said.

Two rooms were damaged, and two were largely untouched. One big limb went through a waiting room of the office.

“You can see the sky,” Miller said.

His grandfather, Dr. Redden Lee Miller, built the clinic in 1950 for himself and his son, Jack, who was a dentist and Lee’s father. The elder Miller conducted his practice in one end of the building, and Jack took the other for his dental office.

Miller said it will probably take a lot to repair the damage it suffered, but he’s grateful that almost none of his father’s old equipment was damaged. The old dental chairs, his collection of implements and most other items were largely unscathed. One old dental cabinet had minor damage when the wall behind it splintered and knocked it over, he said, and some old dental magazines were water damaged. A few glass items inside the cabinet also broke. The most important things, however, were intact.

“I think one of the chairs is probably the first one he bought,” Miller said. “I’m glad I’ve still got it. I was his last patient, in 2003 or 2004; he filled a tooth for me at the age of 80 or 81, and I think that’s probably the last time he ever went in there. But he loved his old things, and it’s fortunate that they didn’t get destroyed. That means a lot.”

There were other reports of trees falling on houses, but little information could be immediately obtained about those incidents. Malone School Assistant Principal Doug Powell said there was a large oak tree on an apartment across the street from the school, and another tree on a house three blocks north of the school in Malone.