____________________ The Jewish Citizen              by Donald H. Harrison

And after it all, still there is music 

SAN DIEGO—Music is a large part of the lives of Bob and Susan Gilson, as was evidenced by the occasional musical keepsakes they found as they sifted today for a second day  through the rubble of their home, one of an estimated 1,600 destroyed by the recent San Diego County wildfires.

Bob is conductor of the Civic Youth Orchestra, and Susan is an Escondido-based dance teacher.  “We had a baby grand piano,” he said in a telephone interview.  “The frame is intact, and the soundboard too.  It’s 300 pounds of metal brass.  We had a couple of guys move it to the side, but we’re not sure what we’ll do with it.”

What was once a 3,100-square foot home on a Via Valle Vista lot overlooking Lake Hodges in suburban Escondido also yielded up some notes from a tour the orchestra took to New Zealand in 1996, and a few orchestral scores.   One was of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony.  The music was readable, though charred, and the pages were burned three quarters of an inch around the edges, Gilson reported.  “I will have to throw it away,” he added.  “Anything paper that is burned is extremely unhealthy.”

The archaeological dig through the remnants of their lives also produced two chanukiyot, one of ceramic, one of metal; an Erte bronze sculpture, about a foot tall, charred but completely intact; an old typewriter, the motor of a sewing machine; pieces of metal mezuzot, though the wooden mezuzot were destroyed.  “My father had a coin collection that we kept in a downstairs closet; we recovered 35 of those.”

Precious few items were recovered from the two-story home, in which three bedrooms and a bath were upstairs—one of those bedrooms filled with records, tapes, filing cabinets, and books.  “I think we have recovered what we can recover,” Gilson said. 

Gone were family photos, prints by Marc Chagall, who like his own family had immigrated from Vitebsk, and keepsakes from a lifetime of traveling together and on tour.

Walking through the rubble was a surreal experience, said Gilson, a member of Temple Adat Shalom in Poway: “It was difficult to orient yourself where you were because the house was two stories. At one point we were standing on what was the ceiling of the house, and underneath that was my (now grown) daughter Tamara’s bedroom, and under that the kitchen.  We’re finding tile, some things from my daughter’s bedroom and some things from the kitchen” all within inches of each other.

Perhaps as unforgettable as digging through the debris was the kindness so many people extended to the Gilsons and their helpers.  “Some people who lived about a mile from the rancho had the back of their van loaded, and were going to every single house with a quart of low fat milk and chocolate chip cookies,” Gilson said.

Representatives of the Rincon Fire Department came by with water and Gatorade.  “We had representatives of Calvary Chapel come by with wire sieves.  The Mormon Church representatives came with two-gallon orange buckets packed with face masks, lip balm, gloves.  Interestingly enough, usually Mormons don’t drink alcohol; but there were two bottles of Corona (beer) in that plastic bucket.  And buckets were left at the base of every drive way of every house that was hit."

On Gilson’s street, all ten houses were destroyed.

The Gilson received a reverse 9-11 phone call at 4:30 a.m. Monday morning, October 22, telling them to get out, to get out immediately.  Bob and Susan got dressed, grabbed some extra pair of underwear,  some jackets, and some legal documents, and a few pieces of art work that were small enough to carry. They also took with them some mats to sleep on, and they were out of their house by 5 a.m.   They each drove a car, each gassed up, and rendezvoused at her  Georgia’s School of Dance in downtown Escondido.

“We tried to lie down and sleep,” but after an hour, they realized sleep would not come.  So they drove to the Coco’s Restaurant on Via Rancho Parkway, arriving just as it was opening for the morning.  Within a few minutes, they were joined by two families in similar circumstances: neighbors from across the street and the family of a board member of the Civic Youth Orchestra.

The three families ate together in shock, then the Gilsons returned to the dance studio. They decided to check into a motel in Escondido because it was close to both the studio and to the house. Although they could have gone to Los Angeles to stay with Tamara, “we decided we needed to stay here,” Gilson related. 

At 11 a.m. that Monday morning, Gilson returned to his house to fetch more belongings.  “This image will stay with me for a long time; the place was totally evacuated. There were no dogs, no bicycles, no people, no cars, nothing.  I never ever had seen it like that.  About 20 yards from my house, there was a fire marshal in his protective gear, and he yelled at me: ‘Where the hell are you going?’ and I said, ‘my house.’  And he said.  ‘You’ve got five minutes; you can’t stay here; the fire is behind that mountain.'”

Gilson said he retrieved a camera, and blankets, and “I remember running down to the living room, and as if I were a camera, I was looking at the art work, looking at the piano, none of which I could take.  I was there maybe 10 seconds, and then I ran down the hall way, into the garage, to my car, and screamed out of the driveway and back down the street...”

The next day, “Tuesday, was the day of hell, the day our house went up.  I couldn’t get anywhere near the place, so I had no idea.   But I decided on Wednesday that I had to go back.  They would have to arrest me if they didn’t let me.  There was a fire marshal there.  He asked ‘where is your house?’ (and after Gilson told him, the marshal asked) ‘do you want me to go with you?’  ‘What for?’ I asked. “It’s bad; it’s real bad,” he replied. My heart sank. I said, ‘I will be okay’ and I started toward the hill.”

Normally, about that time of the morning, Gilson’s two-story home would be silhouetted by the sun rising in the east.  “As I was driving up the street, I realized I could see the sun.”  There was no silhouette.   The first time he looked at the ruins, “I almost fainted; then I almost threw up.”

By the time of our interview today, about 6 p.m. this evening, Gilson had been back to the site about four or five times since the home was destroyed.  “It has become a little easier, but I wouldn’t wish what I felt when I saw it for the first time on anyone,” he said.

Besides digging through their property, the Gilsons visited the disaster recovery center in Rancho Bernardo today, where “they are unbelievably organized; in three hours, you can see everybody there that you need to.

“We are registered with FEMA, the Red cross, the IRS, the California Franchise Tax Board; the County Registrar; the DMV for the one car we lost.  Every agency was there.  All the insurance companies had motor homes outside.  I think they learned their lessons from the Cedar fire four years ago… and from Katrina.”

After the previous disasters, the government agencies this time “seem to have gotten it right.  There has been tremendous monetary loss, and the emotional loss is just not measurable.

“We saw a young mother and a little girl, an African-American mother who was doing okay, but her daughter, about four just couldn’t handle it.  She was so sad because she lost whatever toys had been in her house.  There were a lot of elderly people there, who were having difficulty being mobile, and they didn’t hear so well, but especially the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, they have been very kind and nurturing and have taken it slow.”

Gilson, who recently retired as conductor of the Palomar College orchestra, although he continues to teach part-time at the college, philosophized that sometimes “it takes a horrific event to bring out the best in people.  There is a huge sign on the freeway, the I-15 south, and another at our area near Lake Hodges, that say ‘Thank you, Fire fighters.’  I have seen these signs all over the place, and that makes me feel good.  Neighbors do help neighbors, although unfortunately you only see it when lightning strikes.”

Ironically, after Gilson retired as the Palomar conductor this spring, “people were saying, ‘what are you going to do?  You are retired now!’ and then this happens.  "My wife and I looked at each other.  We weren’t planning to build another house, but that is a new challenge.

“We are trying to be positive, upbeat, stiff upper lip, keeping strong—all those clichés.  I will tell you: the days are okay when we have a lot of things to do.  But we are averaging only four hours of sleep at night.  I find myself awakening almost at exactly the same time each morning as we got the reverse 9-1-1 call, and I find I just can’t get back to sleep.”

Friends have been bringing gifts, both the essentials like food and clothes for the body, and, for the Gilsons, what is sustenance for their souls.  Music.  One friend, Ellen Weller, brought over some CDs and a boom box to play them on.