Homecoming
Residents find lots to love in old Bellevue house
Have you ever wondered about the people who used to live in your house?
Theresa Gallick did, so she invited them back for a visit in September.
She learned a lot about her 1912 Craftsman, including the possible identity of the “baby ghost” her daughter Zofia used to talk to when her nursery was in the front bedroom. She appreciates even more the house’s character and the mark it has left on each resident. It’s one of 10 homes that will be open for the Live Worship Shop Bellevue House Tour from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 21. The tour gets its name from the sign that welcomes visitors to Bellevue.
“It’s not just a house. It’s a special place,” Ms. Gallick said.
Ken Bado, whose family owned the house from the 1930s to the ’70s, nodded in agreement. “I love the coffered ceiling in the living room.”
When he built a house in McKinney, Texas, in the 1990s, he asked for one just like it.
Diana Douglas Shafer of McCandless said her family was living in a two-bedroom duplex on the North Side when they bought this house from the Bado family.
“It seemed so big when I was little,” she said.
The new house looked like a mansion to her younger sister, Jackie Douglas of West View.
With two younger sisters, they moved with their mother in 1974. The two women couldn’t quite reconcile their childhood memories with the reality.
“In my mind, it was so much larger,” Ms. Shafer said.
The former residents traded stories about looking for a warm spot in the drafty old house.
“Did you ever sit on the register?” Mr. Bado asked the sisters.
They nodded and pointed to one in the living room.
“That was the best one,” Ms. Douglas recalled. “Whoever got up first got that one!”
Mr. Bado shared the house with two younger brothers, his parents, Sally and George Bado, and his maternal grandparents, Harry and Marie McKenzie Schreiver. She invented the Pecan Ball and ran the restaurant in the Downtown Kaufmann’s department store, he said. Mr. Schreiver was a Republican borough councilman who enjoyed a good cigar.
“A lot of smoke-filled political discussions took place in this room,” Mr. Bado said, looking around the living room.
His grandfather died in what is now the master bedroom, he said. When Mr. Bado returned home during his freshman year at Bethany College in West Virginia, he was shocked to see a For Sale sign on the front lawn. His family moved to Ross in 1974 and he hadn’t been back to the house until this visit, he said.
The Douglas sisters said their mother was very proud of this house.
“Mom loved the woodwork,” Ms. Shafer said, touching a column at the bottom of the stairs. “And she liked that she could walk everywhere.She didn’t drive.”
The five women didn’t mind sharing the house’s one bathroom, but they did sometimes wonder who kept dropping hair brushes on the floor when no one was upstairs. Years later, a family friend came up with a suspect: He said he saw a ghost in the front bedroom — a woman with long dark hair.
“I don’t remember ever being scared,” Ms. Shafer said.
Ms. Gallick bought the house in 2001 and began making repairs and updates. She removed a wall in the kitchen and restored a bay window she found in the garage. When her daughter Zofia was born, the front bedroom became her nursery. Zofia, now 15, recalls that her toys sometimes started without being touched, one without any batteries. Her mother says she used to tell her of long conversations with a “baby ghost.”
Mr. Bado believes it might have been his grandfather. Whoever it was, he or she stopped chatting or playing with toys about 10 years ago, when her daughter Libby was born, Ms. Gallick said.
She senses a benevolent presence that touches the people who call this place home.
“Every generation has loved this house,” she said. “There is a spirit to it.”
The third annual Live Worship Shop Bellevue House Tour runs from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 21. Tickets are $20 in advance at area businesses or bellevuehousetour.com, $25 on tour day at the starting point, New Life Community Church, 45 N. Fremont Ave.,15202. Proceeds benefit Bellevue Initiative for Growth and Revitalization.