Redlands man watches childhood mountain home go up in smoke. (Dorner Cabin).
I thought this was an interesting perspective on the whole Dorner situation. I feel for this fellow, who watched his childhood memories burn.
"That was home. I've got a lot of memories there," he said. "It was startling to see the old homestead go up in flames. Boy what a story."
"The press keeps calling it a cabin," Bill Glass said Wednesday. "To me it was a house."
Originally the camp was called Seven Oaks Housekeeping Cabins. Subsequent owners dropped `Housekeeping' from the name.
"My father started that camp in the '20s after World War I was over, and that was my home until March of '38," Bill Glass said, "and then the camp was still in the family until 1958, so it was kind of odd to watch that thing burn last night. That one right there, that was home."
Bill moved to Redlands in 1938 but continued to spend summers and holidays in the Seven Oaks camp, mostly working, until 1951.
"In the '30s it was a big deal to come up and rent a cabin for a few weeks and get away from things," he said.
For him it was not an escape: "Billy, the light bulb in No. 3 needs to be replaced. The sewer in No. 7's clogged up."
He also remembers celebrating the end of World War II there.
Now he also remembers the aerial view of his father's work going up in smoke.
"I was downstairs and my girlfriend said, `Turn on the TV' around 2:30 (p.m.). I started watching it solid for about eight hours. I watched it all."
Bill relived watching the footage in a phone interview on Wednesday. There's the recreation hall, the tennis court, the croquet court, he said.
"I probably know that area as well as anybody living today."
The man presumed to be Dorner fled Highway 38 on foot to Glass Road and went left on Seven Oaks Road, Glass said. The suspect went into the first building he came to, which was vacant, a house that sits about 45 feet back from the road, Glass said.
"I wish this guy had gone further down and held up in one of the cabins," Bill said. "He would have been more hidden, and they would have torched that instead of the house."
Six of the rental cabins remain today. His father had wanted to build 20."
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