A Man, His Hunting Rifle and a Devastating House Fire

Below is a story that is reprinted with permission from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. I wrote it as part of a five-story, 63-page special section in the 2019 September-October issue of Bugle magazine. It is written as a dedication to my Grandpa Vern. It follows the path of his hunting rifle that was passed down to my father and eventually on to me before it was destroyed in a 2017 house fire that destroyed our home and most everything we owned. 

Through the Ashes

by Mark Holyoak

I thought, for a split second, about Grandpa Vern’s rifle. It was right there in a case under the bottom of my bed only feet away. But to get it, I would have to hit the floor and belly-crawl under the flames.

My shovel sliced through blackened remains along the subflooring of what used to be our bedroom until it struck a chunk of hidden metal. It was a sound that triggered accomplishment, relief and dread. More than a week of wondering, seeking and searching was over. I’d finally found it! Though its wooden stock was completely burned away, the barrel and action charred almost beyond recognition and the old reliable Redfield scope warped and melted, I had finally found what had been my most prized personal possession—my grandfather’s Model 70 Winchester .30-06.

He bought it shortly before Utah’s deer season opened in the fall of 1941. Two months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Just under a year later, in November 1942, Thomas Vernon “Vern” Holyoak (my grandfather) left his home in Parowan, Utah, to join his fellow Americans and serve in the Army during World War II. He was 35 years old. After defeating the enemy in the African theater, his unit took part in the invasion of Sicily. He spent time in Palermo (a city I lived in 41 years later while serving as a missionary for my church). After again driving out the enemy, he went to Scotland and England before preparing for the invasion of France. His unit landed on Omaha Beach.

He spent more than two years with Allied troops as they pushed through France, Holland, Belgium and into Germany where he fought in many campaigns, at times under heavy fire. In the spring of 1945 he was plagued with a painful and chronic stomach issue. While he was briefly transferred out of Germany for a few weeks to receive treatment, 90 percent of the soldiers in his unit died during a fierce firefight at the Bridge of Remagen.

Grandpa Vern was in Paris on May 8, 1945, for V-E Day, when the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Three months later, he received orders to return home. As he flew onboard a B-17 to Casablanca, French Morocco, a report came over the radio confirming Japan’s official surrender. World War II was finally over.

He was not one to talk about his service—ever. It wasn’t until decades later that my father sat down and coaxed the experiences out of him for the sake of family history and his posterity. We learned that he fought in seven campaigns: North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Northern France, the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhineland and Southern France. The U.S. Army awarded him a Battle Star for each campaign and a Bronze Star for hauling ammunition while under fire. The commanding general gave his mortar battalion a commendation for its efforts in Germany.

After my grandfather returned home, he resumed raising cattle and farming. He also returned to the mountains of southern Utah, where he loved hunting mule deer with the Model 70 each fall. As far as I know, he never had the opportunity to hunt elk since there weren’t any near his home back then. Grandpa passed away in 1992 and my father inherited the family farm and all of his possessions.

I moved my family to western Montana in 2003 where I couldn’t help noticing many of my buddies at church constantly exchanging photos, texts and hunting tales. Though I had hunted rabbits with Grandpa and my family many times as a kid, I had only ever chased deer once with my father, and that was too many decades ago to remember how to do it. But I was determined. I had to figure out this big game hunting thing. When I told my dad about my plans, he said, “I have just the rifle for you.” Shortly after that, he delivered grandpa’s Winchester.

I loved everything about it—the look, the feel, the way it fired, how comfortable it felt on my shoulder as I hiked, and especially knowing Grandpa customized it by cutting the stalk and attaching a recoil pad so it fit him. It fit me too, perfectly. I carried it with an almost tangible feeling of nostalgic gratitude and connectivity to him. I now owned the same rifle that helped Grandpa fill that old freezer in the basement of the farmhouse. I was determined not to squander this new opportunity to chase elk and deer to help feed my family while cementing relationships, both past and present.

The Model 70 not only provided a lot of meat for our family freezer over the years but great memories for me and my son Jace. At the age of 15, Jace made a perfect 202-yard shot on a cow elk with a bullet personally hand-loaded by Grandpa in the 1960s. It was the first elk taken by a Holyoak in our direct family line in more than 50 years. As we posed for a photo I felt that my grandfather was looking down on us. I thought how proud he would be of the great-grandson he never got to meet.

In January 2016, on a late season depredation hunt with the Model 70 in hand, Jace by my side and after a lengthy hike, I placed the crosshairs on a cow elk 375 yards away. Once again, Grandpa Vern’s Winchester fired true. Several hours later, after a lengthy drag through snow up to the middle of our calves, Jace and I and a hunting buddy sat in the bed of the pickup exhausted, sweaty and yet full of adrenaline from what had been our most exhilarating and exhausting hunt together. When I posted the father-son photo with the elk on Facebook, my mother made this comment: “Great picture! Grandpa Vern would be so pleased to see this!”

In December 2016, Jace shouldered the .30-06 atop a mountain ridge and dropped an unsuspecting cow in its tracks. He excitedly called his fiancé and shortly thereafter they made their first joint purchase—a freezer to store the meat. Across the 14 years Jace and I got to carry that rifle, it helped us tag four elk and roughly 20 deer between the two of us.

December 29, 2017, was a frigid day in western Montana. My wife Lori and I were in the midst of replacing interior doors when the power went out. Without electricity, the late afternoon darkness fell quickly over our home so our cordless drill fell silent and our Friday afternoon project ended early. There would be no Netflix tonight. There wasn’t much to do but stoke the fire in our wood-burning stove downstairs and try to keep our house warm. As we lay in bed, we spoke of our ongoing plans to give the home we’d purchased 2½ years before on 10 acres a few miles west of Frenchtown a makeover. With that in mind, a fire crackling in the basement and a hint of the scent that only comes from wood-generated heat, we both fell asleep.

At roughly 6:30 the following morning we awoke. My brain felt as groggy as my body when Lori said she smelled smoke. It was still dark outside. As I turned on my cellphone flashlight we saw the smoke in our upstairs bedroom was as thick as a fog. But the odor was not that of a regular wood-burning fire. It smelled odd, almost electrical in nature—or so I thought. I headed for the furnace. Though the smoke was thick upstairs, I saw individual smoke columns in the furnace room. I thought the furnace somehow shorted out during the power failure and filled the house with smoke. Upon returning upstairs, Lori insisted we open the windows.

“But it’s 12 degrees outside. If we open the windows, we’ll freeze,” I protested. She was right. For the sake of our lungs and our health we had to clear the air the best we could.

With the windows throughout the house cranked wide open, I gathered more wood for the stove as we huddled under blankets around it. We chatted and even laughed for a while, but when I glanced outside from our half-basement I saw an orange glow on the snow.

“The house is on fire!” I yelled.

I sprinted up the two flights of stairs only to see flames shooting out of the ceiling of our bedroom closet. “Get some warm clothes on!” I yelled. “Call 9-1-1! Get out of the house!”

Flames shooting out from our bedroom window

I sprinted downstairs and into the garage in search of something to douse the flames. No electricity meant no water pump which meant little to no water. My brain was running a million miles an hour and totally overlooked the fire extinguisher we kept under the kitchen sink. I ran back upstairs to see what I could salvage before the fire claimed it. As I turned the corner, the entire bedroom from about four feet down from the ceiling was fully engulfed in flames. It almost knocked me off my feet. I thought, for a split second, about Grandpa Vern’s rifle. It was right there in a case under the bottom of my bed a mere four feet away. But to get it, I would have to hit the floor and belly-crawl under the flames. It was not worth the risk. It was too late. I turned and ran to the garage, ripped open the garage doors and drove our two vehicles to safety. Then I stood with Lori in the front yard and watched our home burn until the firefighters arrived.

Investigators determined the cause of the blaze was a chimney fire that smoldered and spread while we slept. That odd smell was not electrical wiring but insulation in the rafters above our bedroom. Two-thirds of our home had to be razed and about 95 percent of our belongings were deemed unsalvageable. Among the losses were all of my guns, many of which belonged to Grandpa Vern: a 1917 Luger 10 mm WW I edition, a 16-gauge shotgun dating back to the 1940s, a .357 magnum pistol in sparkling condition and my pump-action .22 Rossi rifle given to me by my parents when I was 12 years old.

It took 10 months and a lot of hard work after the fire to rebuild our home. Do I feel sad for having lost those guns? Yes, heartbroken. But as time passes I have more gratitude than ever. I am grateful that my wife and I escaped unharmed. I am grateful that Grandpa Vern’s Army uniform somehow survived the flames and the smoke. And I am grateful for those 14 years my son and I got to carry his .30-06 over the ridges and valleys of Montana’s backcountry. Grandpa may be gone, but I felt he was with us on our adventures, every step of the way.

Mark Holyoak is the RMEF director of communication. His middle name is Vernon, named after his grandfather.

Another photo of my charred rifle