WEARS VALLEY, Tenn. — Jo Ann Vaughn remembers feeling amazed at how beautiful the Von Bryan Estate was when she first saw it in 1988. On Monday, she felt sad.
“It’s hard to think of how it was… it was such a big presence,” she said. “Now, it’s nothing much. Just rubble and ashes, lots of ashes.”
Her son, Patrick Vaughn, and their family spent the day sifting through the rubble. They found coffee cups, planters and most notably, a light blue milk pitcher covered in soot.
“That’s belonged to my great-grandmother!” Jo Ann exclaimed. “A treasure… wow!”
Patrick’s niece lived on the property with a friend and had begun to work as the caretaker.
Still, Patrick visited the property every day, looking at ways to improve it for the church groups, families and corporate retreats they typically hosted.
“I just recently had finished a three-level tower,” Patrick said. “The top level was above the roofline so you could have a 360 view from the top.”
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All that remained of the tower were hundreds of nails that fell among the flames.
“I think almost every bit of it will have to go,” he said. “The swimming pool I think can be salvaged, but that's going to be about it.”
He said he’s grateful for the work the firefighters did to try and save their property. He’s even more grateful they made it out okay.
“That fire apparently got the [pool] water too hot for them to get into it,” he said. “The firefighters came through [the side] and turned around and they were able to stay behind [a bulldozer] and follow him out.”
Their equipment wasn’t as fortunate.
“These [four] trucks are complete loss,” Vaughn said. “It's really kind of unbelievable that they were able to work as hard as they did with as much smoke that was up here.”
He said they intend to rebuild the estate and host the firefighters for a celebration of gratitude as soon as they are able to.
“It's still beautiful — you just have to look over the tops of this rubble here and the mountains are still there,” Jo Ann said. “We just have to close this door and open another one and hope that the future is a good future.”