Brown Cottage Suffers Disaster
The Study Center's Beloved Cottage suffers a burst pipe this past January; reconstruction still in progress.
On the morning of January 6th, 2009 Rick Freer, our
Director of Facilites, walked over a slush-covered landscape toward his
office in the Green Cottage. A storm had blanketed 450 Lamberts Cove
Road with a heavy snow just days before, so when he heard the sounds of
rushing water coming from the Brown cottage adjacent to his office, he
assumed it was the snow melt he saw coming from roof and spilling out
onto the deck below. An hour later, the consistency of that rush
hadn’t changed, and he opened the door of the brown cottage to find a
pipe had failed on the main floor, spilling hot water over his feet and
down the hill toward Seth’s pond below.
For three decades, the Brown Cottage has been an integral part of
the FOCUS community. It’s housed staff, vineyard staff, and families
throughout the years. It’s been a home and summer-comfort to crying
children, to elated college students, and to five executive directors.
Built
by volunteers in the mid-seventies, it is a standing homage to the
humble tradition of selflessness and service that makes the Study
Center more than just a camp experience, but a community from June
through August of every year. And, for the first summer since it was
built, it stood vacant and skeletal throughout these last months.
Its now ghost-like appearance is due largely to the specific pipe
that burst, 24 hours before Rick was able to find it. A thin copper
pipe on the main floor, it carried 170 degree water throughout the
house’s baseboard heating. Had the water not been so hot, the damage
could have been dramatically different, but the staggering heat, and a
closed, winterized house created a hothouse affect that lends itself
especially to mold growth: within 36 hours, spores began to germinate
throughout the cottage’s three floors and livings spaces. Little was
salvaged, and the structure itself was nearly all ruined.
As one can imagine, the loss was more than timber and shingles. In
addition to the emotional attachment many of us have to the cottage,
its importance to the daily operation of a summer program cannot be
overstated. Housing for cooks, staff families, and maintenance staff
had to be replaced with off-site housing at a significant cost to
FOCUS.
Predictably, our insurance company has been slow-moving throughout
the process, but Rick Freer is hopeful that the with the money (at
least partially) in-hand, the rebuilding of this historic and important
structure should go smoothly. Minor changes are planned to improve the
quality of life and convenience for those who spend time there, and
additional sites are set on new decking and drainage systems this
fall. The loss of the cottage this summer has been a difficult one to
absorb, but volunteers and vineyard staff have been gracious and polite
about our temporary off-site arrangements. And, as always, our
community has risen above the challenges to make Summer 2009 one of our
most successful yet.
For more information about the Brown Cottage, or to find out how
you may be able to help, please contact Woody Bowman or Rick Freer at
508-693-1369, or at rfreer@infocus.org