Helene forced a North Carolina restaurant owner to leave his home. He just lost his 'Cabin of Hope' in recent wildfires

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Months ago, a washed-out bridge damaged during Hurricane Helene’s flooding temporarily blocked Matthew Rogers from returning to his beloved North Carolina cabin.

The lakeside property in Flat Rock that has been in his family for around 40 years – and has come to represent healing and hope, Rogers says – became a casualty of the recent wildfires in the state.

After seeing the home he affectionately named the Cabin of Hope now smoldered to the ground, there would be nothing left for Rogers and his wife, who safely evacuated the wildfires, to return to.

Over 6,500 acres have burned in the latest round of wildfires in North Carolina fueled by the lingering fallen trees and wood scattered across the ground after Helene, the deadliest hurricane to strike the US in nearly 20 years, slammed the state in September 2024, according to the North Carolina Forest Service.

Rogers’ Cabin of Hope, named after a quote from 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption,” survived Helene’s flooding last year.

“(From) the movie, (it) struck me that hope is … a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good things ever die,” Rogers said.

Despite the loss of his home, Rogers maintains a positive outlook in the midst of tragedy – a trait instilled by his minister father and schoolteacher mother, who taught him to always find the silver lining, even in the darkest of times.

“It’s not anything but an event and a chapter of our life,” Rogers said.

Rocked by Helene

Helene forced Rogers and his wife Rosy from their Polk County, North Carolina, cabin last year after heavy flooding overflowed the nearby Hungry River and damaged the bridge that connected them to their home and neighborhood.

Rogers says he’s thankful that he and his wife were unscathed from Helene.

“It’s not a tragedy, no one was hurt,” he said.

For two months after the storm, they lived in the basement of Three Chopt Sandwich Shoppe, Rogers’ restaurant in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Rogers, ever the optimist, joked that at least he “was not late for work” and that he had access to good food at the restaurant.

With motivational quotes from the likes of Winston Churchill adorning its walls along with banners of Rogers’ favorite baseball team, Cincinnati Reds, the restaurant he has run for decades appears to echo his positive outlook on life as he navigates yet another uncertain time.

Eventually, one of his close friends from church convinced him to stay at their apartment, Rogers said.

Repairs were finished on the bridge a week before the wildfires struck, and a lane opened up for Rogers to access his neighborhood. He could finally check on his Cabin of Hope, located next to a small, eight-acre lake Rogers calls Lake Ann in honor of his mother.

When the couple arrived for a brief visit, the cabin was just as they remembered it – undamaged but a little dirty, Rogers said.

“We cleaned the house, it was the same, we knew the hurricane didn’t damage it and we played music and looked and said, ‘wow this is a beautiful place,’” Rogers said.

What remains of the Cabin of Hope

Last Sunday, Rogers woke up in his friend’s apartment and received a 911 emergency text urging him to evacuate. Rogers initially thought nothing of it. “I thought they’re just clearing the road (as) just a precautionary thing,” he said.

Rogers, who says he’s seen fires burning on nearby mountains in the past, went to bed thinking that he’d be safe from any fire damage.

Early the next morning, Rogers woke up and checked Facebook only to have his ears blasted by the roar of a helicopter flying above a lake on the first video he clicked. That video, taken by aerial firefighter Earl Watters, slowly pans to show the still-burning remains of a lakeside house. Only a chimney appeared to remain standing. Rogers instantly recognized the area.

“The first thing I see is a helicopter taking water out of Lake Ann and I said, ‘that’s our dock, and that’s our home, our home is gone,’” Rogers said.

Rogers immediately woke his wife. The two cried for 20 minutes as they tried to process the loss of their home.

Rogers posted on Facebook, “Oh my God! Our Cabin of Hope is gone!”

A firefighter that responded to the fires in Rogers’ neighborhood reached out to inform him that he was only able to retrieve a small Cincinnati Reds garden flag in his yard, Rogers said. After returning home following the bridge’s repair, Rogers said he put the flag outside to mark start of this year’s baseball season.

A life’s worth of belongings lost

Lost in the fire were decades-old antiques, pictures and scrapbooks passed down from his parents and grandparents, Rogers said. Not only did he lose countless family relics, his wife of 20 years lost her whole life’s worth of belongings.

A spice box from Rogers’ grandfather and an antique deck of cards from 1949 that his grandfather used to teach him poker when he was 12 were all gone, he said. It was the same deck of cards he used last summer to teach his granddaughter the card game.

As Rogers searched for the silver lining, he remembered he‘d once recorded a video and posted it online after his granddaughter beat him in poker.

“Today, we put things on Facebook, and I recorded it and I said, ‘look at Sarah who just beat me in poker,’ because she has a poker face, and you know, that’s the beauty of our technology,” he said.

Rogers worried that he forever lost his dad’s scrapbook that held countless memories – until he called his 87-year-old uncle, who lives in Milwaukee.

“He said, ‘when you had me last year at the cabin, I took pictures of your dad’s World War II scrapbook and I have them,’” Rogers said.

The Cabin of Hope means so much to Rogers and his family, and he says they fully intend to rebuild it. It is insured, Rogers said, and the dock survived the ongoing fires.

“The property speaks of … healing,” he said, adding, “My brother stayed a year to heal from a terrible event.”

In his spare time outside of running his restaurant and as he looks to rebuild the Cabin of Hope, Rogers says he hopes to get his day camp that he coined “Camp Hopewood” up and running again.

Rogers wants kids in the area to have the same kind of experience he enjoyed as a child. “I went to camp here in 1967 – a crying, sniffly, whiny little 7-year-old, and the mountains made me a man,” he said.

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