Quiet Heroes
"My dad chased monsters from the dark,He checked underneath my bed.An' he could lift me with one arm,Way up over top his head.He could loosen rusty boltsWith a quick turn of his wrench.He pulled splinters from his hand,And never even flinched."
34 years ago today, our family farm burned to the ground. It was a scorching hot July afternoon, and my dad had just began the afternoon milking when the fire broke out. We lost baby calves, equipment, and a barn that had stood tall for decades. I can't help but think of a previous blog post of mine about Good Bad Things... you can read it here if you want... but this is just one of those Good Bad Things I suppose.
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Ironically, earlier that very day in 1991, my mom and dad had talked about how the old barn probably needed rewiring soon. Life has a cruel way of showing how quickly everything can change.
"I've learned to never underestimate the impossible..."
The fire didn’t just steal a building — it ripped through multiple structures. The metal fuel tanks that sat near the barn caught fire and were the top priority to the first responders. They determined that they could get close enough to the tanks and douse them with water constantly to avoid an explosion. The tanks were being hosed down continuously by fire crews, but after trying their best for several minutes, the fire chief told my mom that no headway was being made and to go in the house, get what she needed in about one minute because they were going to back everyone up and stop spraying the fuel tanks. It was nearing time to call the entire site - farm and farmhouse - a total loss. They said the tanks would ignite and then explode in a matter of moments and the house would go too. My mom, frantic and teary-eyed, ran into the house, grabbed a half-packed diaper bag and her wedding photo album and headed toward the road as everyone was backed up from the scene.
It was time to let all of it go.
Just as the fire crews ceased efforts, the fuel tank fire died down and there was no explosion. The house was spared.
This devastating fire burned through memories, routines, and the heart of our family farm. But in its place, it revealed the unshakable strength of community and the power of good neighbors.
Dad shared some powerful stories with me this week that I had never heard… and it just put so much into perspective and was mesmerizing in so many ways….”Starry-eyed cross-legged on the floor” looks were all I had to offer him; I am sure.
His entire farm - multiple buildings are ablaze. And neighbors show up with trailers. No cellphones, just logistical thinking on their part knowing that “my neighbor John milks 40+ cows and everything he owns is on fire; I better hook up the trailer and get there as fast as I can.”
This next part is the part that kind of breaks my heart.
As everything is still very VERY much on fire, the cows are frantically loaded on random trailers. Quickly. (Have you ever loaded cattle that know you? Load them on a peaceful day - a calm blue sky and crisp fall morning? It can go HORRIBLY. So instead make this load a four alarm fire (Oldenburg, Sunman, Morris, and Batesville) with the trucks and the lights and the smoke and the heat and the yelling and the unfamiliar voices and faces surrounding the cows. Yeah…) The cows are loaded and taken to a neighbor’s a couple miles away that had a milking parlor that was closed up a while before. (Next silly question: Have you ever been around dairy farmers and their milking equipment? Held together with chicken wire and a part of an old flywheel from blah blah blah because they are so damn busy just keeping their heads above water that everything is just thrown together. What are the chances this equipment is actually going to start up?) It takes some time, but dad and the neighbor get the milking equipment going. So why did this strike me as sad?
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Can you imagine?
Your history, your family farm that YOU are in charge of, where YOU made a living, was on fire and you had (HAD!) to leave. The flames still licking up towards the hot dry 92-degree day sky... and you have to leave. Now.
Did he look through the rear-view mirror? Did he cry? Or was he too numb and too busy?
Did he know then that the fire crews were telling his wife to go in the house and grab only what she could carry because they had to stop efforts and the fuel tanks were the next thing to blow? Did they ever talk about "if you had 60 seconds left in your house what would you grab?" Was he aware in that moment that the home he grew up in, the home his father was born in, would maybe not be standing when he got back?
As bad as things are in life sometimes, you have to be present for the hell.
Read it again: As bad as things are in life sometimes, you have to be present for the hell.
I’m a pretty firm believer in it. (Grow through what you go through vibes.)
I am also a firm believer that in the life that is yours, you must be a primary witness of it.
To live it.
To know it.
To be in the thin or thick of it.
That is how we as human beings process events. That is how we learn to move on.
That is how we honor our past. That is how we teach the future.
And he had to drive away from it.
Not because he didn’t want to stay. He wanted nothing more than to stay.
But because he had to milk.
He didn’t witness the entirety nor the majority of the fire.
Because the cows HAD to be milked.
That’s the attention they demanded. That is the kind of thing people talk about when you talk about choices and lifestyles. Dairy farming was and is not for the weak. Not the weak bodies. Not the weak minded. Not the weak spirited.
And suddenly, after years of wondering, I finally made the connection. It was so hard for dad to tell stories because I’m not sure he ever had the right closure because he was not a primary witness of his own story. I am not really even sure he felt worthy at times to tell a story he wasn’t a part of… though in the same breath, he was the BIGGEST part of the Meyer Dairy story.
We talked about how those simple facts alone may have messed him up for some time. And then - like a light in the dark, a pure revelation - the stories flowed. Finally. I had waited my whole life for this.
I have written them all down, but they are too plentiful to share all of them here. At least right now.
I’ll end with this one that he shared… like a painter he spoke with so much imagery. I'll do my best to capture it:
He said that after he got back from milking that night, the sun already gone but the twilight there, he looked over the farm... or what was left of it. The high heaps of black wet smoking hay… It was gone all except one shed and his house and garage. The fire crews were getting ready to leave. It had been a long day for them too. They told dad to call if anything flared up in the night. My dad’s older brother, Dennis, and our neighbor, Donny, were with him. He was near breaking. He had woken up at 4:30 AM to milk that morning, farmed and fed livestock all day in the brutal heat, went to milk at 4 PM, his entire farm caught fire and burned before 4:30 PM, he took his cows down the road and milked until after 8:00 PM.
And now he was to stay up all night because the embers were so hot that it could catch the house on fire as he and his wife and 6 month old baby girl (me) slept (or tried to) inside.
I think his body language sent an unintentional message, and Dennis and Donny piped up immediately.
No hesitation.
They stayed all night in the chairs and kept watch over the smoldering remains of our beloved family farm.
All night long they stayed so dad could rest.
They knew he had much work and many decisions ahead of him.
Dad awoke at 4 am the next morning to head down the road to milk. When he returned, neighbors were already on site cleaning up.
Mom didn’t call them.
Dad didn’t call them.
They didn't have to.
And our neighbors didn't have to show up.
But they did.
That kind of quiet heroism — of showing up, staying up, and standing guard through the night — is something I’ll carry with me forever. I only wish I had heard the story years ago so I could cherish it longer.
We lost a lot that day. But we found out just how strong we were, and how fiercely loved we were. That fire changed us — it scarred us, shaped us, and in some ways, strengthened us. And today, we honor all of it: what was lost, what was rebuilt, and the people who never let us face the ashes alone.
Love always,
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