Earlier this month, Tara Wilson got a phone call no one wants to receive.
It was Jan. 7, and she was at work. “I got a call at 3:50 [p.m.] from my father-in-law stating that I needed to go home,” Wilson said. “I asked him what was going on, and he kind of paused. Then he told me that my house had burned down.”
The Wilsons’ mobile home off Arkansas 321 near Cabot was a complete loss. Tara and her husband, Ben, moved there 14 years ago when their son, Tyler, was only 3 years old. Now, their home is a pile of burned debris.
After receiving the phone call from her father-in-law, Wilson immediately left her job in Jacksonville to see what had happened to the family’s home.
“I broke down and then got myself back together,” Wilson said. “I drove home and called [my father-in-law] on my way, and I asked if they got my dog out. He paused again, and I knew I had lost my dog.”
The Wilsons’ family dog, Sugar — a half redbone, half blue heeler they had rescued seven years ago — did not make it out of the home.
“She’s not replaceable,” Wilson said. “Two months before this, we had lost our other dog. We had to put him down. So we’ve lost two dogs and a house within two months. We’ve lost everything.”
Firefighters were on the scene when Wilson pulled up to the house, and that is when she saw it was a total loss. The side of the mobile home where Tyler’s room had been was destroyed, and the fire was stopped by the time it got to Tara and Ben’s room, which was still heavily smoke-damaged.
“When I got there, my friends and neighbors were immediately there to support me,” Wilson said. “The pole in the back was still burning, so we waited until it completely got done. They got my dog buried in minutes when we had everything settled down.”
According to the firefighters’ initial assessment, the fire started with the furnace.
“They said it started at 2:30, and within an hour, everything was gone,” Wilson said.
The Wilsons were renting the mobile home, but they were in the process of purchasing it. Their insurance only covered the structure, so their belongings that were lost in the fire weren’t covered. Even if the insurance had covered everything, there are some things that cannot be replaced.
“My wedding dress is gone,” Wilson said. “All of the baby pictures of my son are gone. My wedding pictures are gone. There are so many things that we had after living there for 14 years. Then, losing things that we had before that — my baby book and my baby pictures.”
The community has rallied to assist the Wilsons in the past few weeks. Heidi Stanislawski, one of Ben’s friends from high school, set up a GoFundMe online fundraiser that as of Tuesday had raised almost $5,500. Another family friend, Gayla Calhoun, set up an account at Centennial Bank to collect donations for the Wilsons.
“We’ve had people give us cash,” Wilson said. “Businesses have jumped in. Churches have stepped in to support us. People I don’t even know have called me offering everything they have in order to help us.”
Tyler is a senior at Cabot High School and is active in the band, and Wilson said his school and classmates have stepped up to make sure he has clothes and support in his last semester. Even in the days right after the fire, Wilson said, Tyler turned to his band connections to start moving forward.
“Two days after the fire, he had All-Region tryouts, and he made first band, first chair,” she said. “He is already putting all of it behind him and focusing on what he needs to do. It makes me just that much stronger. He’s strong, and he said he wanted to turn this negative into a positive.”
The Wilsons are living in a rental house owned by a friend and are working to rebuild their lives. Tara said she is grateful for a roof over her head and the safety of her husband and son, but she also misses their home.
Those who want to donate to help the Wilson family rebuild their lives can visit www.gofundme.com/jw38u8 or contribute to the Wilson Family Fire Fund at any Centennial Bank branch.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.