Community rallies around family-owned business that burned down New Year’s Day

PHARR — Two large Pharr Fire Department engines parked in front of Mini Matt’s Building Materials on Wednesday.

The occasion was much more festive than the last time the engines had been in the same location some five months ago. Wednesday’s event was a show of hope for the family-owned business in the face of adversity.

“It’s kind of a rollercoaster of emotions you go through, like the ups and downs,” Isaac Smith, co-owner of Matt’s Building Materials said. “When you lose a place of business — people don’t realize that it wasn’t just a place where we worked. It’s a place where we lived. We did life. We shared life with people and the community.”

Matt’s Building Materials burned to the ground in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. The plot of land where the more than 150,000-square-foot lumberyard stood for decades now sits mostly empty with a chain link fence around the perimeter.

“It was total heartbreak. Total heartbreak and devastation,” Smith said. “Seeing your home burn down, it’s just gut wrenching. It was difficult, and it’s still difficult to see what once was because you spent so much time and effort. There wasn’t a single part of that store that I didn’t touch to some degree. It was just the raw emotion. I can’t describe it. It was probably the worst thing I’ve been through in my life — for sure.”

In the months since Matt’s Building Materials burned to the ground, the lumber store has seen an overwhelming amount of support from the community and the greater Rio Grande Valley.

So substantial was support for the store, they are using the opportunity to pay it forward in the form of a $17,500 to the Pharr Fire Department, the funding of which came from the “We Are Matt’s” T-shirt fundraising initiative.

The store sold 1,200 shirts and raised $8,750.

“Every which way that we’re trying to rebuild and grow, we want to make sure that we’re giving back— that we’re passing along what we’ve got and say, ‘You know what? It’s not hopeless,’” Smith said. ”We’ve been blessed. We’re still blessed regardless of the fire. Regardless if it was December 31 or January 1, we’re still blessed. We want to make sure that’s our message so that people know that hopefully we’re a symbol for hope. We hope people know that we go through these things and that we come out with a positive attitude. Going forward, we’re going to continue to pass on our blessings. That’s what we want to do.”

Smith said that such support has been encouraging for him and his family as they work through plans to rebuild the family store.

“To lose this place of business, it was like losing a home. That was rough,” Smith said. “Seeing the support that we’ve got from the community has really been encouraging. I tell people all the time, the messages and the support that we got, and honestly their prayers, have been the only things keeping us going.”

“It could have been very easy to say, ‘Let’s close it down and let’s just start from scratch. Let’s just do something else.’ The rebuilding process is going to be hard. It’s going to be long and it’s going to be strenuous. There’s going to be a lot of uphill battles, but with the support of the community and the prayers from the community, we feel that it’s very possible. We’re working towards it.”