Help Doris Rebuild After Fire

Please consider donating to support our dear friend Doris Ott, a devoted single mom, as she and her family begin to rebuild after a fire destroyed their handmade home in Versailles and all of its cherished belongings.

On the morning of May 16, Doris set aside her usual work on her house project to drive to Dayton for a reunion and to attend a friend’s daughter’s graduation. As she passed through Midway, she received a call from a concerned neighbor. There had been a lightning strike near the house site, and smoke was visible. She quickly called her son Wyatt, who confirmed the worst: the house was on fire.

When Doris returned, there was nothing left of it. The home she had poured herself into for years had been reduced to smoldering rubble beneath twisted sheets of metal roofing. Everything was lost. A friend gently reminded her that no one was hurt. Had she chosen to work that day, she might have been inside when the lightning struck.

Doris remains resilient, but the scale of her loss is hard to overstate.

Even those who know Doris best and have seen her pour years of tireless effort into this project find it hard to comprehend the scale of the loss. Above all, it was the loss of a dream. This house had been taking shape slowly and steadily for more than four years. Every day involved planning, revising, sourcing materials, hauling supplies, and the generous help of family, friends, and kind contributors. It was a handmade home in every sense, an extension of Doris’s creativity, determination, and deep sense of community.

The specific losses are heartbreaking. Just the day before, Doris had unloaded a truckload of professional woodworking tools, a generous gift from her friend Dr. John Moore. They were all destroyed. She had spent years stockpiling finish wood for floors and walls, gathering it from sawmills and a cousin’s tree, carefully stacking and kiln-drying it, planing it, and even rescuing some of it from a spring flood. Just days before the fire, she had moved it all into the house. All of it was lost.

The list of additional losses is long.

Our goal now is to help restore the dream. While Doris’s losses are substantial, she remains hopeful. Your donation can help replace lost materials and tools and help turn this disaster into a new beginning.

Everyone who knows Doris knows she is a caretaker in the truest sense. She is generous, selfless, and always ready to help. Now it is our turn. Let us show her how much she means to us.

Thanks to Jeff Alexander, Teri Faragher and Richard Taylor for help setting up this page.