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.
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