Finding Strength to Start Anew After Second Tragedy

Sometimes in this business, it’s the people you never meet who leave an impression.

It was that way with Tres Converse, a 44-year-old architectural designer and master craftsman who killed himself last March with a shotgun blast. Friends described him as a gregarious, creative genius who had done marvelous work here and abroad for some of the county’s most notable families. His death, they said, deserved notice.

His friends’ devotion to him and anguish over his death persuaded me to write a column about him.

That column was about Tres Converse, but I remember wondering how his wife and two young children would handle such a loss.

So it was with sadness that I heard last week that Gail Converse, Tres’ wife, had lost the family home to the Laguna Beach fire. She and the children, Hillary, 8, and Andrew, 11, were safe, but for the second time in seven months they had suffered a sudden, calamitous tragedy.

How resilient can any family be?

“The idea went through my head, ‘Why me?’ and I thought about Job,” Gail Converse says as we talk in a relative’s home where the family is staying temporarily. “Those things go through your mind, but you go right on. It sounds corny, but I really count my blessings. I could always paint a worse scenario.”

Warned early about the fire danger, she had a chance to save essentials: pets, family photos, videos and other things the children wanted. Tres’ drawings and hundreds of his books were lost.

She remembers gathering what she could, getting safely down the hill and thinking, “OK, now what do I do?”

It’s a question no doubt asked more than once during this cursed 1993 for the Converse family.

“After my husband’s death, which we’re still in the process of working through--nothing could compare to that,” she says. “I had a sad moment that night (of the fire) when I got to my brother-in-law’s house and watched TV and they said Skyline was devastated.”

The next day, when her sister told her the house was gone, Gail took the children aside. “I turned to the kids and said, ‘I’m sorry, I have some bad news. Our house didn’t make it.’ ”

I ask if she’s tried to explain to the children why things happen the way they do.

“I try to tell them of good things and positive things,” she says. “I don’t ever say to them, ‘Why us?’ I really don’t have the answer as to why these things happen. But I’ve talked to them more about their father than I have about the fire.”

The fact that their friends lost homes to the fire has, at least, spared them from feeling singled out again by the Fates, she says.

“I think they’ve done real well,” she says. “They’ve had some ups and downs and it comes out in other ways that you wouldn’t even know that that’s what it was.

“My son is a little more nervous about intruders in our home. I asked him once, ‘Don’t you think I can take care of you?’ He said, ‘You can take care of me, but I worry about you being able to protect me.’ But he has worked through that and we have had some great talks--my son and I, especially.”

The outpouring of sympathy and support from relatives, friends and acquaintances was staggering, Gail says. “The children have been overwhelmed by all the attention, and I tell them all the time how kind people are and how loved they are by so many people.”

Eventually, of course, the support gave way to the hard, lonely business of the family starting anew without their husband and father.

“I was on automatic pilot, I felt like I was in a cocoon,” she says of the days after Tres’ death. “You feel real detached, you’re going through all these emotions. . . . And there were times since he died, I’m just angry. I go through all these cycles where I get angry at him, then angry at the kids because I don’t have any time for myself, everything is just give, give, give.”

As for the kids, she says, “I’m sure they don’t understand why he would leave us. There have been some real poignant moments. My son, who is a very good student but had gotten a B in math, asked me, ‘Was it because I got a B?’ So, I’ve had to repeat to them, they had nothing to do with it.”

But for every moment like that, there have been others that bring serenity. “I overhear them laughing and I say, ‘What’s so funny?’ and they’ll say they remember ‘when Dad did this.’ So, they can talk about him. Or, they’ll say, ‘Let’s go Dad’s way up the hill.’ So, they do talk about him that way.”

After last week’s fire, just like last March when Tres Converse killed himself, there is work to be done for Gail and the children.

First, they must re-establish a home.

The family house was in a tract, but Tres had customized it a year ago with many personal touches.

“I need to get back to Laguna,” Gail says. “I’m going to rebuild. If Tres were alive right now, he’d be sad (about the fire), but he’d also be joyous that he’d have the opportunity to rebuild the house exactly the way he wanted. There was a lot of him in the house, so now my big decision is, since the insurance will build it the same size as it was, I thought, I’ll build it exactly the same as it was.

“Then, I was thinking, maybe I should incorporate some of his ideas but also make it what I want. I don’t know. I’ve got time to think about that.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.