The city rebuilt after a 1997 tornado flattened a subdivision and claimed 30 lives. Now a family has rebuilt its 55-year-old business six months after it was razed by a late-night blaze that threatened downtown, interrupted power to the city and forced school cancellations.
Visit Danek Hardware and Lumber today and you will find family members unloading tractor-trailer rigs of inventory for the new 4,600-square-foot retail store. The family patriarch, Emil Danek, 73, says that everywhere he goes in the community, people ask when the store will reopen.
The short answer - soon.
Jarrell Mayor Troy Clawson said the Daneks' quick recovery is no surprise.
"I don't even know if there ever was a thought, not rebuilding, with those guys. They just said, you know what, it is what it is. You got lemons, you make lemonade," Clawson said. "They just raked back the ashes, put 'em in a Dumpster, and started rebuilding."
One of those folks raking back ashes, Greg Danek, grandson of John Danek who purchased the store in 1954, lives about one mile from downtown. Someone called about 1:30 a.m. that awful April morning and he rushed downtown. By then, the fire in the 100-year-old building was roaring out of control.
Firefighters saved nearby structures, but the hardware store stocked paint and other flammables, and it went up in a "matter of minutes," said Chris Hoelscher, a lieutenant at the Jarrell Volunteer Fire Department.
The smoke had barely cleared when the Danek family faced the future.
"About two days after the fire, we had a little family meeting … and got together, and said we're going to rebuild. We made our mind up pretty quick. It wasn't too tough a decision," Greg Danek said.
The cause of the fire has not been determined. The Daneks say they were able to rebuild because the store was insured.
Greg and younger brother John recently installed a 4,500-square-foot oak floor any dance hall owner would envy. And the knotty, white pine interior walls provide that small-town feel that is absent at the big city, big box retailers.
"I love the scheme of the building. It is a little more modern than it was, but the facade still looks the same as when I was a child," Mayor Clawson, age 37, said. "I remember going in there with my dad when I was 10-11 years old."
The Danek name has been a fixture in downtown Jarrell since 1954, when John Danek purchased the venerable building. His son Emil bought out his dad in 1973. Working only part-time today, he has turned over operations to sons Greg and John. (His wife, Dolly, still keeps the books the old-fashioned way with an adding machine.)
The old Danek store continued a tradition back to the early 20th century when people from the nearby communities of Salado, Bartlett and Florence bought lumber there to build homes. The new Danek store will continue to carry stuff like nuts and bolts, plumbing and electrical supplies, and offer family-style personal service, their trademark for half a century.
The Daneks have actually been operating in a limited capacity for months. Shortly after the fire, they opened an office in the old Eagle Bank building next door. Because firefighters saved some lumber and other products that were stored in several adjacent buildings, Danek Hardware soon reopened.
Although the family is looking forward to a new chapter in the family business, Dolly says one thing about the old place won't be missed. Several decades ago, a mortician embalmed corpses in the restroom.
