Earthquake Recovery Proves a Shaky Proposition : Showpiece House Rises Like a Phoenix--After a Struggle

Lynn and Dennis Ward look around them and see their neighborhood returning to life. And the Whittier residents point to their house as Exhibit A.

The Wards live on a serene corner of Beverly Boulevard, north of downtown Whittier, in an area of mostly large, well-maintained older homes. The Ward home was a showpiece in a recent tour, sponsored by local realtors, of four Whittier properties damaged extensively in the Oct. 1, 1987, earthquake.

One of the rattled houses had to be razed. The others hardly seemed salvageable. But today, one new and three restored and seismically reinforced houses have risen like phoenixes from the rubble of the 5.9-magnitude shaker.

The tour “was almost like the home’s coming-out party,” Lynn Ward said. “It had been so destroyed and so close to death.”

A series of Times articles have portrayed the Wards’ struggles to save from demolition their spacious, two-story, three-bedroom home, which was built in 1921. It was based on a design of Greene & Greene, brother architects who designed many beautiful and well-known homes in Pasadena.

The Wards could afford to rebuild their home because of a low-interest 30-year loan for $100,000 that they arranged through the disaster relief office of the federal Small Business Administration. That agency also quickly refinanced the Wards’ first mortgage at the same 4% interest rate.

Nonetheless, their mortgage payment has tripled, and their expenses have far exceeded the loan amount.

“When you do a project like this, you don’t add up the bills,” Dennis Ward said. “You don’t want to know. It’s too depressing.”

Before the tour, the Wards installed a lawn of fresh sod, “just to make it more presentable,” Ward said with a laugh. “The tour was good motivation for us.”

Dennis, 50, and Lynn, 49, have allowed little evidence of the temblor and its aftershock to survive. There is the one stress fracture in the foundation below the house, cracked plaster in the basement and the barely perceptible stippling on the banister caused by the rain of falling plaster--minor details compared with what the house looked like after the quake.

At that time, just two rows of bricks supported the porch. Only the front door held up the second floor. The front wall of the library collapsed. The French doors snapped and shattered. The house had shifted on its foundation.

To rebuild the house, contractors propped up the second floor and replaced the outside walls, because they were built of hollow, clay-tile bricks, which do not meet earthquake safety standards.

Dennis Ward removed and numbered each piece of Australian eucalyptus trim and molding from the study so he could later reinstall them. During this process, he found bills and letters dating from the 1930s that had slipped behind the fireplace mantel.

The Wards finally returned to their home, then only partly restored, during Thanksgiving weekend in 1988.

They count themselves lucky as they pass vacant lots where homes used to be. The damaged house behind them has been deserted since the earthquake.

“Humans have to have territory,” said Lynn Ward, who works side by side with her husband as a broker for a local realtor. “My little piece of private space was stripped from me. And it was beyond my control.”

Most of their displaced neighbors have also returned.

“Different people would arrive back at different times,” she said, “and everyone would welcome them back with flowers. People are more concerned for their neighbors now. We’ve seen each other vulnerable. We’ll still see one another in the street and give each other a hug.”