In 1993, GaryMcFall and Rob Ramoy bought a double lot in a new neighborhood near Bethesda’s Wildwood Shopping Center. Although the couple loved the builder’s floor plan, McFall, who studied interior design in college, had the builder make a few changes, including removing a wall and creating a recessed living room ceiling. Ramoy converted a fourth upstairs bedroom into a home office for his real estate business. They moved into their new home toward the end of 1994.
In the couple’s eyes, the house was perfect. The 15,000-square-foot lot provided space for a deck, an in-ground pool and a private oasis of greenery and blooming plants—enough space, in fact, for the couple to host a wedding with 200-plus guests for McFall’s niece.
Then in May 2001, McFall, 56, and Ramoy, 59, set off for a long weekend at their Rehoboth Beach house. As they were approaching Annapolis, one of Ramoy’s real estate colleagues telephoned with urgent news: Their house was on fire. After calling Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service to confirm that firefighters had been dispatched to their Fleming Avenue address, McFall and Ramoy made a U-turn and headed back toward the devastation that would engulf their lives for the next few years.
When the pair reached home, the scene was chaotic and surreal. Although the fire was out, 85 firefighters and 15 fire engines were still on the scene hosing down neighboring houses to prevent them from catching fire, too. According to Montgomery County fire investigation reports, the couple’s house had imploded shortly after firefighters had arrived, with part of the roof falling through to the first floor. As McFall and Ramoy sat in stunned silence staring at the smoking shell that had been their home, strangers in suits approached proffering business cards. Lawyers. Insurance specialists. Insurance advocates. “I didn’t even know those people existed,” Ramoy says.
The following morning in a Bethesda hotel room, McFall and Ramoy watched as local news anchor Barbara Harrison reported the details of the fire. For the first time, they saw the flames. “We sat there in shock,” Ramoy recalls. “It didn’t even look like our house.” Investigators believe that the fire was caused by a short in a wire that powered the pool lights. That spark ignited the deck, and flames quickly spread up the back of the house to the roof. The fire nearly destroyed the second floor and caused extensive first floor damage. Water laid waste to the basement. Ramoy describes the photos taken after the fire as having an eerie Phantom of the Opera quality, with everything in ruins.
The property had sustained an estimated $1 million in damage and neighboring homes had suffered $220,000 in smoke, water and heat damage.
Their Own Private Pompeii
The next few months were a blur. McFall and Ramoy rented a house in Potomac but often returned to the charred remains on Fleming Avenue to search through the rubble and salvage what little was left. “We felt like we were sifting through the ruins of Pompeii,” Ramoy says. The men found a shard of a ginger jar here, a crystal from the foyer chandelier there and, in the kitchen, the intact food and water bowls belonging to their Lhasa Apso, Elmo. They recovered a few pieces of furniture, and, amazingly, a large Waterford crystal vase that had sat atop a chest in the foyer and managed to survive the comings and goings of the firefighters and their equipment.
McFall and Ramoy were touched by an outpouring of concern from family and friends. Neighbors stopped by to ask if they could do anything for the couple. Friends and even strangers sent cards and letters. A group of neighborhood girls went door to door collecting money for “Elmo’s house.” McFall and Ramoy were touched by the girls’ thoughtfulness, but they didn’t need the financial assistance and donated the money to the neighborhood homeowners’ association.
While their loss was devastating and dramatic, Ramoy says the fire gave him insight into the way he had been living. He says his ultimate “aha” moment occurred when he peered into a dumpster brought on site to collect debris. Inside it were piano keys from McFall’s baby grand, dishes, suits, ties and many pairs of shoes. “I thought, ‘What do you need all that stuff for?’” Ramoy says. Although he had never considered himself to be materialistic, something in his thinking changed that day, he says. “When you look at 25 years of hard work gone in 20 minutes, you realize how stupid it is to put such a value on stuff. Now I have one suit, three dress shirts and three ties,” Ramoy laughs. “We have empty closets and drawers,” he says.
Even as the debris was cleared and the extent of the damage became obvious, Mc- Fall and Ramoy knew that they wanted to rebuild in the neighborhood they loved.
The new floor plan stuck largely to the original, but McFall and Ramoy made changes that they had wanted even before the fire, including moving the laundry room upstairs and straightening the stairs to the basement to make furniture moving easier. They expanded the deck, reconfigured the kitchen and covered the brick fireplace in the family room with stone.
Finally, in September 2002, 16months after the fire, McFall and Ramoy were able to move back into their home. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, says Ramoy, especially on the night that the smoke detectors went off—a false alarm—but eventually, the couple settled in. “We were just so happy to have a home again,” Mc-Fall says.
A Second Chance
The five-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath home now is elegantly and simply furnished with antiques and other pieces that have meaning to the owners. The men are extensive world travelers, and they have refurbished their home with pieces collected on trips to Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and Australia. “It turned out well,” McFall says. “In the end, we got a beautiful house.” McFall, who was responsible for the interior design, describes the décor as “classic, yet eclectic.”
The dramatic foyer has a new crystal chandelier and a pale limestone floor with a black granite border and diamond inserts. A contrasting black carpet covers a sweeping staircase. Positioned at the bottom of the stairs is one of the pieces in the couple’s collection of blackamoors—intricately carved sculptures of African-American figures popularized by the Italian sculptor Andrea Brustolon in the 17th century. The circa 1870 Venetian-carved polychrome statue of a woman is one of a pair, with the second in the living room. Also in the foyer is one of McFall’s and Ramoy’s most prized possessions, Le Sacre-Coeur, a richly colored oil by early 20th-century French painter Élisée Maclet. The couple owns two of his works; the second hangs at the top of the stairs. During his 30-year career as an Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche buyer and boutique manager for Saks Jandel, McFall made frequent trips to Paris and visited the Montmartre scenes depicted in Maclet’s paintings.
On the left, the foyer opens onto a formal living room in chocolate and black. The circa 1870 loveseat is covered in black and white Stroheim & Romann fabric. Above the sofa, covered in soft brown cotton velvet, hangs a set of Italian black, crackled-finished chinoiserie panels. A pair of blackamoor lamps illuminate the space. McFall’s new baby grand piano is accented by a gilded swan piano chair that he found in Moscow. The chair had been made for the last Russian czarina, Alexandra Romanova, in 1905. Two watercolors by an unknown Russian artist the couple discovered at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow provide a splash of color. Across the foyer from the living room is a formal dining room featuring a dark mahogany Duncan Phyfe dining table rescued from the original house—the couple unearthed it from beneath the fallen ceiling and had it refinished. Two black silk panels embroidered in gold from Hoi An, Vietnam hang on the wall, one depicting the Vietnamese sign for good luck, the other an exotic flower.
At the back of the house, the upgraded kitchen has distressed cream-colored cabinets, top-of-the-line appliances and granite countertops in Italian gold oak with flecks of rust and black. The cranberry red color of the walls extends into the family room with its casual, comfortable furniture.
Seven years after the nightmarish fire, McFall and Ramoy are quick to point out the good that came out of their experience. “Even though we loved the original house, today we have a better one,” says Ramoy. McFall says that after learning that their insurance policy would not cover the cost of replacing their home and possessions, he and Ramoy went on a mission to educate friends and families. “We taught a lot of people about the proper levels of insurance and how important they are,” McFall says. “Yeah,” Ramoy laughs, “we were the complete downers of the Rehoboth Beach social scene that summer.”
Despite the work done to the house during the past seven years, it still holds poignant reminders of the fire: the scratches the refinisher could not completely remove from the dining room table, the soot that still appears in the drawers of a chest that somehow survived the inferno. “Digging in my garden, I find chunks of glass and scraps of fabric— pieces of the old house,” says Ramoy. “It never goes away. Never.”
Gabriele McCormick is a frequent contributor to Bethesda Magazine.
