The story of an earlier Los Angeles wildfire and how one family rebuilt their life
For those who have lost homes and personal treasures in the Los Angeles fires or are wondering how the thousands of victims will get through the agony of property loss, Mike and Susan Garson’s experience provides a message for you:
You will – mostly – be able to move beyond it. Eventually. It will not be easy. There will be times of struggle. You will have to get used to the idea of living with the reality that everything is going to be different. The bottom line, however, is that somehow things often have a way of working out.
They should know. It happened to them.
Their home near Los Angeles and everything in it burned to the ground six years ago. The loss included virtually everything they owned. Only a few small items escaped destruction. They each lost a lifetime of memorabilia – the things that had defined their lives for more than 70 years. They lost the artifacts collected and created over the years through Mike’s music career. Note to David Bowie fans: keep reading.
Amazingly, they watched the fire happen. On television. More about that later, as well.
First some background. The surname of the principals in this story is not a coincidence.
Mike Garson is my cousin. Our mutual great-grandparents were Barnet and Sophie Garson, who came to New York from Minsk, Russia, in 1892.
Mike also is a pianist of significant note. He grew up in Brooklyn and was about to give up his dream of becoming a professional pianist when he decided in 1971 to do one more tryout – for the pianist position with David Bowie’s first North American tour. Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson gave Garson the job after he played eight bars. It was the beginning of a decades-long collaboration with Bowie – more than 1,000 live performances worldwide plus numerous blockbuster albums. He also has performed with musicians specializing in a wide range of genres and has composed thousands of pieces of music in various genres.
In about 1998, Mike and his wife, Susan, decided that with their two daughters grown and out-of-the-nest, it was time to relocate from the home in Los Angeles where the girls had grown up. It was time for a home for just the two of them, but also a home that could accommodate the creation of Mike’s continually growing volume of musical works.
They found the truly perfect situation – a mid-size home with a detached studio facility in picturesque Bell Canyon, an unincorporated community in the southeast corner of Ventura County, just west of the Los Angeles County line. “It was sort of a dream house,” Susan said. Mike agreed: “A beautiful piece of property with beautiful views everywhere.”
Within their first year in the house, they went out on the porch one day and saw a fire in the distance, maybe a half mile to a mile away. The trees were flaming. They loaded their car with their most important possessions and left. False alarm; the fire never came near their house. About 10 years later, roughly the same thing happened – a fire in the distance that looked like it would reach their house. This time, Mike was gone on tour. Susan loaded the car and left, but again the fire threat dissipated.
Then in November 2018, it happened again. “We saw flames out across the porch,” Mike recalled. Maybe a quarter mile away, maybe more. “And we thought, no problem.” There had been no evacuation order and they had seen this movie before. They were certain their home would be safe once again.
Then, suddenly, at three o’clock in the afternoon the next day, they realized they had made a serious mistake. This time, the fire was coming for them. Fast.
They had time to take . . . well, almost nothing, not even medicines. They grabbed a couple of pairs of pajamas and ran. On her way out the door, however, Susan reached up at a wall and grabbed a small painting as she passed by.
They drove to the home of their daughter, Jennifer, and her family. They found their other daughter, Heather, and her family there when they arrived.
The TV was on and the Garsons’ two sons-in-law were watching the fire news closely. An hour earlier, one of them, Heather’s husband, Mark Bakalor, had watched on live TV as his parents’ home, situated about 10 miles from the Garson home, burned to the ground. Now, he and Jennifer’s husband, Peter Shuper, began whispering to each other, not wanting to attract the attention of Mike and Susan. It was another live-action news crew filming the fire destroying another house. They all watched in horror as Mike and Susan’s house and studio crumbled into a pile of ashes.
The only thing easily identifiable amid the ashes was the nine-foot brass harp, the curved frame that fits just inside the outer edge of a grand piano and sustains the tension of the metal piano strings. Later, when they went to the scene for a closer look, they found just a few small items worth saving:
· The mezuzah in the shape of a piano Susan’s parents had given them years earlier was resting in the ashes a few feet from the burnt-out piano harp.
· A small statue of a Buddha Mike and Susan had acquired because they like Eastern things.
· A small rock with the word “Hope” on it. Part of it had broken off, but the word was intact.
The items spoke volumes to Mike and Susan, not only about their loss but also about having hope for the future. It was too soon to be able to frame serious thoughts about how the future might work out, but maybe there was to be some hope.
“What’s the expression?” Mike asked. “From the ashes, Phoenix rises.”
They also found and were able to save Mike’s baby shoes, which his parents had had bronzed after he outgrew them. It was a common practice among parents from about the 1920s into the 1940s. Another omen, perhaps? The road to their next stage of life would be long and it would take baby steps to get there.
The nine-foot grand piano was a $200,000 Yamaha Disklavier, one of the first of such pianos to be made by Yamaha in the 1980s. Mike described it as a modern-day player piano, an acoustic piano that has a recording and playback system. The music then can be transferred into a computer, manipulated in terms of notes, keys, speed, and tempo, and then transferred back to the piano to be played automatically.
Mike also lost two other unusual pianos. One was an acoustic piano that also was able to play other instruments through a cable. The other was a Bosendofer from 1900 that was a work of art with carved and hand-painted legs and trim – a showpiece, although it no longer made fine music.
Susan, meanwhile, had a large collection of one-of-a-kind antique clocks that came from her parents, who had been antique dealers.
Also lost were unreplaceable baby photos, wedding photos, and a journal Mike kept during a youth trip to Israel when he was 15.
Despite the losses, Mike said he was able to turn his head on the past relatively soon after the fire. His way of fighting off the pain of the loss was to look to the future. It was not so easy for Susan. She went into therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome and was on anti-depressants. “It was quite a few years before I could say it was behind me,” she said, adding that she still suffers from periodic panic attacks. The current wave of fires, she said got her “stirred up again.”
After the fire, Mike left within days for a planned nine-month music tour. Susan moved in with her daughter, Jennifer, and family. “It warmed my heart” to be with them, she said. When Mike returned from his tour, they began talking about their options for the next phase of their lives.
Mike wanted to rebuild at the same location in Bell Canyon. He loved it and had begun to shape a mental version of how it might work and look if they could rebuild from scratch. Susan had loved the property, as well. The location, however, was flawed in terms of access; there was only one road out. Too risky for a fire-prone area, they agreed.
They chose Calabasas, a community about 15 miles south of Bell Canyon situated on Highway 101, which extends the full width of the Los Angeles metro area, from the ocean to the San Bernardino Mountains. No access issues. They found a house there they liked and rented it.
Meanwhile, it took two years to collect on their homeowners’ insurance, a process that required an enormous commitment of time. Every single item in the house had to be cataloged. Susan began to understand how consuming the process was going to be when the lawyer who was representing them told her the detail had to go down as deep as how many potholders she had in a kitchen drawer. Mike said that by the time they got the stack of paperwork together and ready to submit, it was about . . . well, just look at the photo below as he demonstrates the size of the stack with his hands.
There also was a second insurance settlement four years after the fire from Southern California Edison, the regional electric company, which faced a lawsuit from about 1,000 property owners in the Bell Canyon area. Edison had admitted in 2019 that a circuit problem with its power equipment likely ignited the fire in Bell Canyon.
The settlement, coincidentally, came at the same time the owners of the residence in Calabasas where the Garsons were renting had decided to sell the property. The Garsons happily bought it.
Also, several years after the 2018 fire, the Garsons sold the land in Bell Canyon where their home had been.
Ultimately, they were able to replace the Disklavier piano with a used one for about $38,000, Mike said. He had been associated with Yamaha, promoting the company, longer than any other artist, and they assisted him in locating an excellent used Disklavier that they sold to him for a fraction of its value. The money, Mike said, came mostly from the proceeds of a GoFundMe campaign started for the Garsons’ benefit by two friends who had acted entirely on their own.
Among the lost memorabilia in the Bell Canyon fire were the gold records Mike had received from the recording company that had made and sold the records. A year or so after Mike and Susan bought the house in Calabasas, their daughter, Heather, and husband, Mark Bakalor, went to work behind the scenes to get the gold records replaced. They called the recording company, which agreed to replace them without charge.
“They surprised us and came over and we were very touched,” Mike said.
One more thing.
Remember that small painting, no more than about 11 x 14, that Susan grabbed as they were running from the house in Bell Canyon with flames at their heels?
It was a painting of Mike made by . . . are you ready for this? . . . David Bowie.
Bowie had made three paintings of Mike. He gave Mike one, and the other two somehow passed to others. One of the two sold recently at Sotheby’s, Mike said.
$90,000.
As for the totality of their fire experience, Mike put it this way:
People seem to come together instantly in a tragedy. It’s a beautiful thing. “Somehow the rules of the game, of competition and all that, get put on hold, and we’re just human beings all in the same mess.”
The bottom line: Many times, it really is possible for things to work out.
As for the current wave of fires in the Los Angeles area, Mike and Susan are watching closely. This time, their car is packed.
NOTE TO MY READERS: I write this column, Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. You can subscribe for free. However, if you enjoy my work, please consider showing your support by becoming a paid subscriber at the level that feels right for you. Click on the Subscribe button below. The cost can be less than $2 per column.
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Amazing story. Too bad (SOME) "people don't seem to come together" during tragedies. Attaching "strings" to any aid while fires are still burning is pure evil.