In the only home that 10-year-old Cutter Gilbert ever knew, he rarely rescues.
“I was facing the bed here, and that wall over there, that’s my mom’s bedroom,” Cutter Gilbert said.
At about 12:45am on Friday, the flames involved the house along Leonard’s US Highway 69.
Within minutes, the house he shared with his mother, Megan Evans, and her grandmother were gone.
“It’s still very fresh so we don’t know what to do next, so we’re very overwhelming. We’re really not,” Megan Evans said.
The house burned very quickly and Evans said he believed they would not have been alive if they were home at the time, but the whole family spent the week at the Stock Show and Rodeo in Fort Worth.
“Cutter purchased this steer last March,” Evans said.
“I’ve been working on him ever since, walking him, blowing him away every day, washing him every day,” Cutter said.
Despite the devastation at home, Cutter decides to move forward with a project that he began with Megan’s boyfriend, Cain, who unexpectedly passed away five months ago.
“About two miles from here, he was in a car accident the day after the church. He was actually there to help him pilot,” Evans said.
Last week, Cain’s family and Cutter’s FFA friends intervened in his help. Even amid a new wave of sadness, the fifth graders felt pressure to succeed.
“I was going to help you get a new home once you sell it in Fort Worth,” Cutter said.
“He has a big heart, but that’s not something anyone really has to do, especially at that age,” Evans said.
In the end, No. 7 did not prove to be a stroke of family luck. But their community continues to meet, just as they did at the Stock Show.
Online fundraisers raised $7,000 for immediate needs as they waited for insurance.
“I think it’s God’s way to tell me, ‘Hey, you need to slow down, you’ll need to learn to ask for help,'” Evans said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
