Longfellow House gets TLC
PASCAGOULA - The new owners of the landmark Longfellow House, Drs. Randy and Tracy Roth, are looking forward to renovations that will enable them to move in by Christmas.
That will be a perfect timing as they have five children, including triplets born just weeks after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the rest of Beach Boulevard, including the Roths' home a few blocks west of Longfellow House.
They bought the home from the University of Mississippi Foundation, which had received it as a gift from alumni Richard and Diane Scruggs, who had spent $1.2 million to preserve it in 1993. Irby Tillman & Sons construction company of Pascagoula handled the intricate restoration of the landmark, which was going to be demolished.
"The antebellum home has so much legacy," Roth said. "We'll spend time learning all the history. We hope in 20-30 years it will just be known as the home where the Roths raised a family."
Built in 1850 for a New Orleans businessman, it was a family home until the 1940s when it became a small resort hotel. Rumor had it that poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow vacationed there. The rumor started because he mentioned Pascagoula in his poem, "The Building of the Ship."
But historians point out Longfellow, born in Maine, never traveled further south than Washington, D.C.
The home's colorful history also mentions ghosts, but those tales don't bother the Roths.
Anna, 9, the Roths' oldest child, thinks the ghost stories are neat, her mom said. "We tell them that they are nice, friendly ghosts," said Tracy. "We have heard all the stories since we originally moved to Beach Boulevard in 1996."
"We have already gotten a lot of laughs after phone calls and e-mails about ghosts," Randy said. "We're excited and our kids are excited. It's a great neighborhood and we already have so many friends within walking distance."
Dr. Randy Roth is director of inpatient physician services at Singing River Hospital. Dr. Tracy Roth is on extended maternity leave from Gulf Coast OB-GYN with 9-month-old triplets, two girls and a boy. They have been living in Mobile since Katrina but will move into a mobile home beside their new home until it is renovated.
Realtor John Jones said everyone is pleased that this piece of history survived the storm and will again be a home to a Pascagoula family.
"The second and third floors are in great shape," he said. Those are the floors where hundreds of social functions have been held for the past 50 years.
"We will renovate the first floor and also put in complete kitchen facilities," Tracy said. "Randy is a gourmet cook."
Katrina pushed 4 feet to 5 feet of water in the first floor of the 4,500-square-foot home. It is reportedly the only beachfront antebellum home on the Coast with two floors that survived Katrina.
The asking price was $750,000. "We worked it out to meet a fair price," said Roth.
The home is on the National Register of Historic Places.
In deciding to sell, the UM Foundation cited difficulty in maintaining the property from Oxford and that it did not comply with the Foundation's mission to educate.
Source: http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunhera ... 840631.htm
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