88-year-old rebuilds family home after wildfire
MEDICINE LODGE, Kan. - Don Gerstner saw it as a sign from God.
At age 87, he considered retiring from his carpentry trade. He thought about it a few times before, but the phone always kept ringing.
So when his home and barn burned to the ground in the Anderson Creek wildfire, Don and his wife, Carol, saw the miracle in it all.
Their wooden garage still stood — complete with all of Don’s tools.
“Someone up there was trying to tell him something,” Carol said. “You aren’t supposed to retire yet.”
She stood on the porch of their nearly finished home, amid a rolling Gyp Hills backdrop of cedar trees and prairie grass. Almost every day of the week for the past 15 months, Don, now 88, has been rebuilding a home on this spot just south of Medicine Lodge where they raised their three children.
All they need now is the air conditioning and television installed. Then, maybe, by next month, they might be moving to their new home, said Don.
He never even considered living anywhere else.
“I’ve always been an optimist,” he said. “I’ve also been kicked around enough in my life I know you have to go on no matter what happens.”
Don comes from a long line of skilled craftsmen. His grandfather, on his mother’s side, was a builder. His grandfather on his dad’s side was a builder. His son, Kyle, is also a builder. “I kind of got it in my blood,” Don said. They bought a small, late 1800s house on this 40-acre parcel around 1960. Over the years, he added on it — room by room, until it wasn’t even recognizable, said his daughter Lisa Gerstner Boston.
“He is a good builder,” Lisa, an artist and teacher in Colorado, said. “He has been doing this all his life; he just does it slower now.”
She recalled a conversation five years ago when her father said he was thinking of finally retiring.
“He is always thinking of his future,” she said. “He said he would like to build one more really nice house before he retires. He just didn’t know it would be his.”
But on March 23, 2016, Don and Carol were watching the reports of a wildfire blowing into Kansas from Oklahoma. It was heading toward Sun City when the wind switched, blowing it toward Medicine Lodge. Don had just stopped hosing down the house when the electricity went out. His son, Kyle, called from Lawrence, telling him it looked like the fire was just five miles away.
“I hung up and looked out the kitchen window, and I would say 200 yards away was the fire — it was already here,” Don said.
He called to Carol. They grabbed the vehicle keys and left.
“We left with nothing but the clothes on our backs,” said Carol.
They drove to the top of a hill a little ways from the house and watched their home burn to the ground. Don said he served in the Korean War. Things could be worse.
“Nothing bothers me,” he said. “I knew I was going to rebuild from the start. This is what I’ve done all my life anyway.”