Widow selling hubby's labor of love

KANOSH, Millard County — Some guys want race cars, some want yachts, some want, gulp, mistresses.

Joe wanted an old house.

Well, fine, said Joe's wife, Donna. She could live with that.

Thus begins a love story with a sad but happy ending.

It began one fine spring day nine years ago, in 2002, when Joe and Donna Vande Merwe, a young couple in their 70s, were driving north on the I-15 freeway, returning to their home in North Salt Lake from their new second home in St. George.

Life was good. They were in no hurry. Joe liked to take the byways and check out little Mormon towns in the hinterlands. About halfway to Salt Lake, he steered off the freeway and aimed the car for Kanosh, a central-Utah farming village of about 500 people that was settled by Mormon pioneers in 1867 and named for the local Indian chief.

Smack in the middle of town, at the intersection of Center and Main, stood a two-story home built back when Chief K'Nosh was still alive. Like a fading film star, the structure spoke of a magnificent past but a shaky present. Joe and Donna walked inside. The rafters were full of bat dung. The roof was about to collapse.

Joe's whole life was construction. His father owned a construction business in his native Holland. When the family immigrated to the United States after World War II, Joe, a 17-year-old teenager, took over where his dad left off. Building stuff was what he did.

"I've got to have this house," he said to Donna.

He learned that a family named Watts owned the house. That it was built in 1887 as a private residence for James Gardner, Kanosh's first mayor. And that in 1901 it was bought by a man named William George who turned it into the George Hotel. It remained a hotel for many years and was owned by the George family until the Watts family bought it.

The Watts were not interested in selling. The place had sentimental value. Joe persisted. He was sentimental about it, too; he wanted to restore it to its original glory. Finally they agreed on a price.

For the next eight years Joe and Donna traveled the 200-plus miles to Kanosh, every other week or so, and spent the middle of the week working on their new old house. At first they stayed in the town's lone motel or in Fillmore 20 miles away. Eventually, after finally installing indoor plumbing, they checked into the hotel.