Echoing ‘Makeover,’ friends aid family who lost all in blaze.
By Josh Rabe
The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
Copyright 2007 The Oklahoman, All Rights Reserved
CORUM, Okla. — Just hours before a team from ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” broke ground on Gene and Peggy Westbrook’s dream home in Lawton, another family was escaping their burning home about 35 miles away.
R.D. Gaither is the thread that ties the two families.
When the Westbrooks were in a traffic accident last July - which left a son a paraplegic - Gaither, a volunteer firefighter, was the first emergency responder on the scene.
“It was a bad wreck,” he said Tuesday. “It had the road closed for about three hours.”
While a father and son in wheelchairs made the Westbrook family a good choice for the TV show, it has been family and friends and helpful organizations that have come to the Gaithers’ rescue after their home burned. That includes a new prosthetic leg Gaither was fitted for in Oklahoma City on Tuesday. His previous one burned in the fire.
Gaither said he felt sorry for the Westbrooks but wouldn’t compare his situation to theirs.
“I’d say I’m not that bad off,” Gaither said. “I can still use my leg. I just need to get another one made.”
It was likely a candle that sparked the fire that destroyed the Gaithers’ trailer home.
His wife, Rebecca Gaither, awoke about 3 a.m. to screams from her daughter and a friend who was staying over for the night.
“I looked over my shoulder and I could see the flames jumping up the wall,” Rebecca Gaither said. She said she ran to the kitchen to get a pitcher of water but when she returned, it was obvious the pitcher would be of no use.
“I hollered out to my daughter and her friend to get out of the house,” she said.
Her husband followed.
R.D. Gaither was overcome by smoke and collapsed on the floor. While trying to escape, his left foot was badly burned and he could no longer walk. He wears a prosthetic for his right leg, which he lost in a 1981 motorcycle accident with a drunken driver. But he didn’t have time to rescue the prosthetic.
“I didn’t even know he was hurt until he fell near the doorway,” Rebecca Gaither said. “He was yelling for me to get out, but I tried as hard as I could to get to him and I just rolled him out onto the porch.”
As the Gaithers began to search through the wreckage of what had been their home, the eyes of Lawton turned to the Westbrook home, where thousands gathered to watch as a new home took shape.
The Westbrooks’ traffic accident occurred just a few miles from Gaither’s home. The Westbrooks’ vehicle was rolled into a ditch, throwing Gene Westbrook through a window and pinning his children inside.
‘One of the first to respond’
“Ron was always one of the first to respond whenever we had a fire,” said David Hornbeck, Gaither’s friend and Corum fire chief.
“When they couldn’t get into the car, Ron was the one who went back to his house and got a chainsaw and started cutting through trees,” Hornbeck said. “He helped get the boy out who was pinned inside.”
Both children survived but the accident left James Westbrook, 9, paralyzed below the hip and Katie Westbrook, 11, with one kidney.
After the fire, the Gaithers weren’t insured and were left with nowhere to live. They hadn’t been able to find anyone willing to insure a 30-year old trailer and were hoping to build a new home.
“You just go on,” Gaither said. “There is no other option. You sit down and quit and feel sorry for yourself or you get up and go on.”
Hornbeck said Gaither’s friends tried in vain to reach the producers of “Extreme Makeover” while they were still in Lawton to tell them about his plight.
“Ron ain’t the type of person that would ever go ask for help,” Hornbeck said, so a group of friends took it upon themselves. They are slowly rebuilding the Gaithers’ lives, one piece at a time.
A fellow firefighter donated a trailer for the family to live in, and his friends, mostly firefighters, have been remodeling the home. It may not be a 5,200 square-foot dream home, but Gaither said it’s still like a dream come true.
“I’m tickled to death for what they put together,” Gaither said. “I didn’t expect any of this. I didn’t know what we would have done.”
Friends, neighbors and even strangers have brought the family everything from dishes to doors.
“If you look around our house now, you probably won’t see anything that wasn’t donated,” Rebecca Gaither said.
On Tuesday, Gaither traveled to Oklahoma City to be fitted with a new prosthesis at Scott Sabolich prosthetics.
Burns on Gaither’s foot kept him from walking until about two weeks ago, but he can’t wait to get his new prosthesis, which could be ready in about a month.
“It sure is something just to be able to walk again,” he said as he tried on a prosthesis Tuesday. “You don’t know how much you miss it until you can’t anymore. They better watch the door, because I may run out of here with this thing.”