Santa Rosa couple, together 70 years, celebrates rebuilding one year after Tubbs fire

La Rae and Leo Lefor stood in the dining area of their newly rebuilt house outside Santa Rosa on Monday, one year after the historic Tubbs fire leveled the home they built on the same rural Rincon Valley area property decades ago.

As La Rae walked through the room using a cane, the 84-year-old Wallace Road resident paused briefly to say Oct. 8 was a significant date long before she became a survivor of California’s most destructive wildfire.

On the same day 70 years earlier, Leo asked her to go steady with him. La Rae and Leo were freshmen at Analy High School in Sebastopol. They married five years later in 1953.

“We did not want this to be a double anniversary,” La Rae said.

“But that’s the way it goes, I guess,” Leo, also 84, promptly added.

Since they first became a couple on Oct. 8, 1948, the Lefors have overcome numerous obstacles, including repeated separations while Leo served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years. For La Rae, the loneliness she felt then was even more painful than losing the house she lived in for more than 40 years.

“His being in the service was the worst time in my life,” she said.

After the fire wiped out the Lefors’ house, along with 5,300 others in Sonoma County, La Rae and Leo didn’t expect to be living in a new one-story home there less than a year later. They were particularly discouraged after seeing it take months just to get the rubble cleared from their burned home.

But thanks to a fateful decision they made while evacuating in October 2017 and the determined work of a general contractor determined to help them get back on their feet as quickly as possible, the Lefors are among the first fire survivors in their area to finish rebuilding.

Nine other Wallace Road homes destroyed by the fire are under construction and owners of four more have been issued building permits, according to Sonoma County permit data. The Lefors are the only ones on the road to have completed home construction.

La Rae is grateful to be out of the motor home she and Leo lived in on their 26-acre property during the rebuilding. Still, the transition has been tough.

“I’m having a hard time with the house, but I’m doing better,” she said. “I miss my old one.”

The design of the new home is nearly the same as the last one, but La Rae can easily point to some differences. She was quick to note, for example, the kitchen was slightly smaller, so the Lefors have one less cabinet now.

“It’s my fault,” La Rae said. “I didn’t catch it in time.”

On Oct. 8, 2017, the Lefors evacuated their old house after La Rae got a late-night phone call from her daughter, urging her to flee. By that point, La Rae had already heard “the killer wind” - her phrase for the northeasterly Diablo winds that fueled the Tubbs fire’s 12-mile sprint from Calistoga into Santa Rosa.

“I had heard the wind hitting the house for hours that night,” La Rae recalled. “Just whopping it.”

The Lefors knew they lived in a fire-prone area. They were around for Sonoma County’s 1964 Hanly fire and have fence posts on their property now blackened twice by wildfire. La Rae even made a habit of praying “Please, God, don’t burn my house down,” she said.

Still, there was no sparing their property last October. Thankfully, the Lefors got out in time - along with their five dogs, nine cats and one parrot. However, they lost two cats, two parakeets, two geese and 12 doves in the fire.

As they were racing to get out of their house before the flames arrived, La Rae made a choice that would later prove essential to their ability to rebuild quickly. She made sure her son-in-law - who came to the house with her daughter that harrowing night - grabbed a filing cabinet where she had stored important documents.

She did not realize one of those documents was the architectural drawings for their house.

Ross Albertson, project manager for the Lefors’ general contractor, Shook & Waller Construction, said having the original plans helped tremendously to build another house.

The project was truly a team effort and the Lefors were a vital part, Albertson said.

“Every time we asked them to do something, they were there the next day doing it,” he said. “A lot of people that are working and trying to figure this out and dealing with insurance, they don’t have a lot of time on their hands. But they’re also not 84 years old.”

When the Lefors built their first house on Wallace Road, Leo, a carpenter, did it himself. La Rae designed it. This time around, however, Leo had no interest in being so personally involved with the construction.

“I had my tour of duty, to put it bluntly,” he said.

Still, the couple knew they wanted essentially the same house they had before the fire.

“I created it the first time, and I was happy with it,” La Rae said. “There was no reason to change it.”

The Lefors knew Shook & Waller Construction because one of the company’s owners attends the same church as their daughter and son-in-law. La Rae and Leo had parked their motor home at that church, Stony Point Christian Fellowship, for about two weeks after the fires.

Albertson said the construction firm’s leadership was moved by the Lefors’ loss and felt compelled to help them fast. Building their new home started in April and finished in late September, and the work continued even before the Lefors had everything straightened out with their insurance company.

Everything ended up working out with the homeowner insurance, but Albertson said the company wasn’t going to let the financials hold back the construction.

“We really felt like we needed to help these people no matter what,” he said. “We wanted to make it work for them because it was the right thing to do.”

As they adjust to life in their new home, the Lefors are still struggling to cope with the things they lost that were left in the house destroyed in the fire.

La Rae on Monday lamented some of the items she did not retrieve while evacuating a year ago, including two gallon-sized bags full of Leo’s military memorabilia and a set of porcelain swans her grandmother brought to the United States from England.

“I feel like I’ve let my ancestors down,” she said.

Despite everything they’ve lost, the Lefors are getting through their recovery the same way they’ve managed prior life challenges.

They each boiled down the source of their resilience to five words: “One day at a time.” The phrase is so important to them it’s written on the license plate frame on the back of their motor home.

“It seems to me that life is like a roller coaster,” La Rae said. “You go along, and things are going great, and then all of a sudden, zoom. And then things get better and they go along great, and then, zoom.”

Sitting next to Leo on the couch in their new living room, La Rae said, “I’m going even now.”

“(It’s) kind of building up,” Leo said, suggesting the metaphorical roller coaster could take another deep plunge at any moment. “We’re waiting.”

His wife agreed.

“You never know,” she said.

But she does know how she’d face the next challenge - and who will be by her side if and when it comes along.

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @thejdmorris.