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Couple turns rubble into holiday tour showcase

Renovation project became a life lesson

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Bill and Amy Kennedy rebuilt this South Park home after it burned, and now the home is one of the showpieces in this weekend’s Historick South Park Holiday Home Tour.

Staff photo by Jim Witmer Bill and Amy Kennedy rebuilt this South Park home after it burned, and now the home is one of the showpieces in this weekend’s Historick South Park Holiday Home Tour.

By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer Updated 8:30 PM Wednesday, December 2, 2009

On Dec. 4, 2004, the Historic South Park Neighborhood Association was reveling in its most successful holiday home tour to date.

The celebratory mood turned chaotic with the clanging of fire trucks and the sight of smoke pouring out of a home at 214 Perrine St. Neighbors rushed over to find 50-year-old George Crouch being dragged out of the burning home by his neighbor, Roger Hall.

Tenant Laura Wright screamed, “My babies! My babies!” leaving neighbors to fear the worst. But it was cats, not children, trapped in Wright’s upstairs rental unit. One neighbor performed CPR on a cat while firefighters placed face masks on some of the other cats.

Four of Wright’s 12 cats died in the blaze. Crouch, who started the fire when he fell asleep while smoking, suffered serious burns but survived. While grateful no lives were lost, the close-knit community feared the property would become a vacant lot.

They didn’t count on the ambition of a young South Park couple, Bill and Amy Kennedy, who had been looking for a renovation project. And what a project it was, requiring 2½ years of labor for Bill and his father, Roger Kennedy, a retired contractor.

Five years after the devastating fire, the burned-out husk that was 214 Perrine St. has become one of the showpieces of this year’s Historic South Park Holiday Home Tour, which takes place between noon and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5.

“At first, I thought they were crazy to take this on,” confessed Karin Manovich, president of the neighborhood association. “Now I see it as symbolic of South Park’s optimism, resilience, and taking ownership of problems and fixing them ourselves.”