03-03-2007In the early morning hours of Feb. 25, a fire started at the apartment and storage building at 3440 S. CR 25, Warsaw, displacing three families and destroying an irreplaceable collection of antique cars and boats.
No one was killed in the blaze, but an important lesson was learned by everyone touched by the devastating event.
Only one of the families living in the apartments had insurance, and the owners of the building, Art and Cookie Gakstatter, were underinsured.
Of the 23 collector’s cars in the storage area of the building, only nine were insured. And those insured were not adequately covered.
“My advice for people is to update your insurance value every year when you renew your policy,” Art said. “We thought that if the building caught fire it would never completely burn. It was a large building. With the wind and ice (Sunday), it was the absolute worst condition.”
Thanks to working smoke detectors, everyone in the building got out without serious injury.
“Everybody was very lucky,” Art said.
“That fire spread so quickly because of the wind,” Cookie said. “Thank goodness no one was killed or hurt badly.”
“You really can’t have too many smoke detectors,” said Art. “Make sure you have working smoke detectors. They saved all the people in the building.”
The building, which housed three apartments, had both hard-wired and battery-operated smoke detectors.
Art credits Joe Lardino, the building manager of the Gakstatters’ properties for the past 23 years and a volunteer firefighter in Pierceton, with making sure the smoke alarms were in working order.
“He always saw that everything was enforced,” Art said. “He always made sure the smoke detectors were working when he left the building.”
While the smoke detectors saved the most important things, the residents’ lives, the detectors could not stop the fire from destroying the building and its contents.
“There were a lot of memories in there,” Cookie said. “Our whole life practically was in there together.”
“We still have some cars,” Art said. “This is not a ‘woe is me’ story.”
“We hate to lose all those cars, but we still have our family,” Cookie said. “We have good memories with our family, and we will always have those.”
The couple still has a some collectible cars at another location, but some of the oldest and rarest now sit in the charred rubble that once housed them.
The Gakstatters shared a few of their memories of their unique collection of vehicles Wednesday afternoon.
The 1938 Ford
In 1972, before Art and Cookie were married, they hopped on a motorcycle and made a trip to Vevay, in southern Indiana.
The purpose of the journey? Art, who worked in Baltimore and returned to Indiana on weekends, was meeting Cookie’s parents for the first time.
Little did the couple know that they would purchase the first of many unique cars that made up their collection.
They saw the car, a 1938 Ford, with a “for sale” sign and stopped to take a look.
“We bought it on the spot,” Cookie said, adding that car belonged to the town doctor at one time.
“It had been in a garage since 1952, and the garage fell in around it,” Art said. “It was not in bad shape, but it had been sitting quite a while.”
The man who pulled it out of the garage had put the “for sale” sign on it just a day or two before Art and Cookie purchased it.
“It still had 1952 plates on it,” Art said. “And it only had 37,000 miles on it.”
A few weeks later, Art picked up the car, which still had the original mohair interior and only one spot of rust, and took it home to begin the restoration.
Once he got it home and started the project, Art discovered a small treasure in the glove compartment – the doctor’s original World War II gas ration stamps. During WWII, ration stamps were issued to people who wanted to buy gas – the doctor was allowed gas to do his routes and check patients.
“It’s the first one we restored,” Cookie said. “And now it’s ashes.”
“It was a neat car,” Art said. “That one may have been my favorite.”
The “Model Shay”
Art and Cookie also had a replica Model A Ford that was built in the 1980s. The car, which the couple purchased about five years ago with fewer than 5,000 miles on it, looked just like the original Model A, including the rumble seat. However, the car was made of fiberglass and had Pinto running gear and disc brakes, making it suitable for highway driving.
“You could go out and run 70 miles per hour on the highway to Florida, no problem,” Art said.
The 1949 Studebaker
With 41,000 actual miles, the 1949 Studebaker was a real find for the Gakstatters.
“I talked to the second owner of it,” Art said. “He went to the Korean War and came home from the service with a pocket full of money. He bought the car from a widow who had bought it 20 years before.”
After the young soldier had the car, he sold it to a band director at Purdue University.
“The band director sold it to Phil Brandt in Indianapolis, and he sold it to me,” Art said, adding, “it survived 58 years with only 41,00 miles, and it was wiped out in 10 minutes.”
Each of the 23 cars in the Gakstatters’ collection lost in the Sunday morning fire was special to them in some way. From that 1938 Ford to the 1949 Studebaker that had just 41,000 actual miles, from the Lotus Europa to the Model T roadster that once belonged to State Rep. Dave Wolkins, and the 1961 pink Ford Thunderbird and 1951 Studebaker truck Art’s uncle bought brand new then left to him, each vehicle had a story (many more than just one) that the Gakstatters remember fondly.
“Our kids loved the cars, too,” Cookie said. “We all cried as we watched them burn.”