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More than 20 months have passed since the house on Bond Street that was once home to Mary Hite and her son, Gerald, caught fire as she was being evaluated for advancing kidney failure at a doctor’s office.
A series of trials — medical, financial and governmental — have thwarted various efforts by the family to rebuild their home. Now, with Mary Hite in need of home dialysis and no other way out of continued bunking with friends, the mother and son are renewing their efforts to rebuild the wood frame house and avoid pending condemnation of it by Terrebonne Parish authorities.
“The structure is still there, what we need to do is get the roof fixed, and rebuild what had to be gutted out,” said Gerald, who is now, like his mother, disabled. His prior employers included the Terrebonne Parish Juvenile Detention Center, the Nicholls State University Police and the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Mary Hite’s career was also law enforcement-centered. She was a pioneer in corrections, the first female administrator and warden of a Bayou Region jail.
The Jan. 30, 2014, fire at 220 Bond St., which broke out at about 11 a.m., was determined electrical in nature. Although the fire took less than a half-hour to extinguish, nobody was home when the blaze occurred. Houma fire officials at the time determined the damage to be “severe.” A rebuild will have to be up to parish and state codes, and the house will also require elevation. Gerald is not sure how much the total job will cost but knows that the elevation alone will run about $15,000.
The family did not have fire insurance, Hite said.
“It’s been a real struggle,” Hite said of efforts to repair the house. A page was set up at the website GoFundMe.com but it has received little attention, and only a little more than $300 in donations. “With me being disabled we need the help more, because there were things that I would have done myself that I now cannot do.”
Former employers and friends say they are doing what they can to assist, but also recognize that more help will be needed for the dream to become a reality.
The page seeking donations for the project can be keyed up at https://www.gofundme.com/geraldhite; He can be reached at 985-209-9146 or geraldhite1@gmail.com.
Maj. Mike Solet of the Terrebonne Sheriff’s Office, who worked with Gerald Hite and knew his mother when she was warden at the Terrebonne jail, is aware of the Hite family’s situation, which he views as a matter of someone always helpful to others now needing assistance.
“He has always been a man of integrity, a good guy who has always wanted to help people,” Solet said.
Mary Hite, former Terrebonne Parish jail warden, and her son Gerald, a former police officer, outside their house at 220 Bond St., Houma, destroyed by a 2014 fire. They hope to rebuild the structure to code.
