A year ago, Martha Bothwell began what seemed like a nightmare, but on Saturday she received a gift she had almost given up dreaming about.
On Dec. 22, 2013, Bothwell’s birthday, she heard a few loud pops and emerged from her trailer outside of Elma to find the garage in flames. The electrical service in the building, which had been repaired recently, had malfunctioned and started a fire that engulfed the garage and was barely stopped from spreading to Bothwell’s home. While her home had been saved, Bothwell had no insurance on the garage and was now without power, as the electrical hookup was on the side of the garage. For the 66-year-old Bothwell, who is disabled and on a fixed income, the cost of hooking up the power once again seemed financially out of reach. She began to look at almost every possible avenue and was close to securing a United States Department of Agriculture grant to rebuild her garage and get power back to her home.
In the meantime, for the last 12 months, Bothwell has been in the dark, without heat, running water, refrigeration or a stove to cook. Bothwell has leaned on her sister Debi Coder, who lives next door, for assistance with everything from being able to shower at, hauling water from and eating meals at Coder’s home. For heat, however, Bothwell has one small propane heater to keep her warm.
“I’ve always been sort of a camper-type person, so it was miserable at first, but I got through it,” Bothwell said. “It’s been a learning experience. It has been an adventure.”
Days ticked by with Bothwell huddled close to the small heater, doing what she could to get by as she tried every avenue she could from the USDA to the Red Cross to get some sort of assistance. Finally, one day she had taken just about enough of the cold.
“I prayed one day,” Bothwell said. “I got down really bad. I said ‘I can’t stand this anymore. It is cold in here.’ Things were getting overwhelming because I am trying to take care of this whole property on my own. I just kind of gave up because I wasn’t getting any answers. I didn’t know what else to do. I was giving up.”
Then, just five days before Christmas, a number of locals came together to take showing the light of Christmas to the next level.
Bothwell had asked for a bid for the electrical work that would be needed to put her back on the grid, and she was quoted $2,300. A few of the companies that heard that she had been without power for almost a year came together to give her the best Christmas gift they could think of — electricity.
“I heard that for a year she had no power at all and that kind of made me mad,” said Marc VanOstrand, who headed up the project. “I got ahold of some of my friends and they donated either monetary or material donations. She now has a new mobile home disconnect and everything has been taken care of. Everybody joined in and we wanted to make sure that by Christmas she had electric. It means a lot to try to help out where we can. We just figured we would help Martha out and we did it. The PUD even put in the poles to make it work.”
The donors
The list of donors included Levee Lumber of Hoquiam, Platt Electric, Madsen Electric, CED, Grays Harbor Star Electric, RB Construction, Oszman Services, Jeff Abramson Construction, Chimney Techniques, JHD Diesel, Brad Hake Construction, Marc VanOstrand, Debbie Madison, Greg McDougall, Matt Horton and Luke Yarwood.
So at 8 a.m. last Saturday, Jeff Abrahamson arrived to dig a trench for the wiring, McDougall, Horton and VanOstrand put a new service box next to Bothwell’s mobile home and, after the state inspects the work, the yearlong nightmare will turn into a Christmas that Bothwell won’t soon forget.
“These guys are wonderful,” Bothwell said. “I was so shocked. I started crying when they came up the drive today. It is so wonderful they are doing this. It came just in time.”
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