By Lisa Brown –
Here is the story about the good luck charms (cross, wreath and water pipe) hanging above the office door on the wall at Banana Split ice cream shop on the East Side of Aurora.
The bent pipe serves as a reminder of what happened May 24, 2012, the weekend of Memorial Day, the official start of Summer. It was a Thursday morning around 8 a.m. when I received a phone call from an employee who lives down the street to say there was a pole laying on the building. Then, I took a call from Alarm Detection saying there was a problem at the store and the fire trucks would meet me there.
My husband Randy and I went to the Banana Split. When we approached the Split, we saw three or four fire trucks and numerous police cars with their lights on. We looked at each and said, “oh no, this doesn’t look good.”
It was an emotional time for me, because I had just lost my dad, Ivan Seppell, 20 days earlier. My parents owned Jonlee Flowers in Aurora and that all came tumbling down, and my sister, Laura, Laura’s Flowers, was opening her store June 1 that my dad had worked so hard to get ready for her debut.
There was smoke coming from the building, knowing there is a non-conforming clause on the building. If we lose more than 50% of the building, we can not rebuild. It goes back to residential. We are told what had happened. A delivery truck from a supplier had gotten caught up in the overhead power/ telephone, cable wires and moved forward. Doing that, he snapped the utility pole and the transformer fell on the side of the building and roof. This transformer had 87,000 volts going through and needless to say, anyone in the store would not have survived. Because we have metal doors, we needed to wait to have ComEd shut off the power before the firemen were allowed to enter the building. Eventually a ComEd truck showed up and started to power down the lines. Outside, everyone was telling us all the equipment, all of our freezers, ice cream machines, slush machines, registers, security system, everything would be fried. We were thinking this was the end of the Split.
When we went in, the back storage room, looked as if there was a fight in there. There was smoke damage, water damage, roof damage. Everything and everywhere was a mess. We needed to have our cooler emptied with all the mix we just received from the night’s delivery, all the toppings, milk, had to be thrown away. We had customers help us empty the store. We had our mix supplier come pick up our mix. We had family, friends, and employees help us get through all of it.
All of the ice cream machines, freezers, registers, were fine. The security system, water heater, roof, parking lot all needed repairs. It was more than $60,000 worth of damage, but our main equipment was fine. Talk about having some guardian angels watching over us! With ComEd’s help, we had a group of men who worked non-stop, to get open by Saturday afternoon! It was a tedious job because they had to reconnect hundreds of wires back together.
What amazes me still to this day, is that not one cup was burned, or ruined, that boxes with burn marks that were obvious, didn’t catch on fire! That the ice cream equipment was perfectly fine. That the things that needed replacing were things that were not critical to our business.
Did we have some guardian angels looking over us? Absolutely, yes. I truly believe, it was my dad and my in-laws, Owen and Ruth, who were keeping a watchful eye over us. All four of our parents assisted in helping us start the store, why would they not help us now, especially in our time of need!
The wreath was from our son-in law. The pipe? From water heater that burst when the voltage went through it.
• Banana Split celebrated 35 years with a ribbon-cutting produced June 21 by the Aurora Regional Chamber of Commerce. See the video at facebook.com/thevoice.us.
Randy and Lisa Brown are owners of Banana Split.
