On August 29th, 2019, a wildfire that started above Bountiful roared down the hillside and destroyed Dan and Cherilyn Fisher’s home of over 18 years.
The experience was devastating.
The Fishers, retired and on a fixed income, lost everything they owned, including irreplaceable family mementos and valuable antiques.
Fortunately, incredible people stepped in to assist. First was Clark Ivory (affectionately called “The Duke” by Dan) and Kirt Harmon (“The Godfather”) from Ivory Homes. They offered to rebuild a new home for the Fishers at cost.
Through their professional contacts, they got donations and massive discounts from a variety of different construction vendors and subcontractors. In an amazing show of generosity, local subcontractors jumped at the chance to be a part of the Fisher Home rebuild project.
One of those subcontractors was Geneva Rock. Brandon Pace, Geneva Rock’s area manager for the ReadyMix South Division, coincidentally grew up in the Fisher’s neighborhood, and his 77-year-old mother, suffering with Alzheimer’s, is one of their neighbors.
When she smelled smoke that night, she exited the front of the house with a flashlight and was quickly enveloped in the heavy cloud of smoke covering the cul de sac.
Meanwhile, two doors down, Dan Fisher was fleeing for his life. He had just jumped into his pickup truck to drive to safety when he saw the dim flicker of a flashlight through the smoke. He made his way to Brandon’s mother and said, “Jolene, you’ve got to get in the car. There’s a fire. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Then Dan, with his house burning to the ground in the background, drove Jolene Pace to safety, where he was able to contact her children and sister to come care for her.
When Brandon heard about what Ivory Homes was doing, he quickly got the ball rolling on a concrete donation from Geneva Rock. He felt that it was the least he could do for the man who had saved his mother’s life.
Geneva Rock donates regularly to the communities in which they work, but for Brandon, this donation had special meaning.
“I’m really proud of what we were able to do as a company,” Brandon says. “It’s neat to be able to have somebody close to me affected by it.”
Everyone who participated in the project was affected. Kirt describes it as “among the top five experiences in my building career” and the Fishers have expressed profound gratitude for all who were involved.
The Fishers love their new home. It is the dream home they never dreamed they would have. It was built with the highest level of earthquake resistance, includes a zoned system for heat and air, and is equipped with a modern, high-tech kitchen. Cherilyn spends hours cooking complicated meals from scratch now just because she enjoys her kitchen so much.
And Dan still raves about the superior quality of concrete he received from Geneva Rock. In fact, Kirt recently received a text from Dan about moving snow off his new driveway. The text said, “My driveway is perfect. My snowblade didn’t catch on anything. I’m used to this old broken up driveway, but this one’s like Teflon.”
While Fisher had hoped for 3,000 pounds per square inch, the concrete poured by Geneva Rock was almost 4,5000 psi. When he dropped a heavy-duty hammer on his driveway the other day, it bounced right off.
“If you are looking for quality concrete, you don’t need to look any further than Geneva Rock,” Dan says.