BUCK RUN - Joseph J. Roperto said Monday he will not let his dream of restoring the James B. Neale mansion die, in spite of this month's fire that ravaged the interior of what once was Foster Township's most glorious home.
"I would like to rebuild it. We are going to try," Roperto said while walking around what is left of the 78 Hill Road building where he played as a child.
Roperto, 82, of Gainesville, Va., had nearly completed renovation of the mansion when fire struck on the morning of Jan. 10, leaving walls, floors and little else except broken glass, broken doors, broken roofs and broken dreams.
"We were so far along," Roperto said while gazing at the charred remains that retain the scent of the fire. "We would have been able to move in by the middle of this month."
Instead, he spent Monday examining the shattered remnants of the mansion and wondering what would become of it.
State police at Frackville said the fire began on the first floor as the result of an accident with an extension cord. Police said the fire caused about $400,000 in damage.
However, Roperto said he is dissatisfied with the official explanation of the cause and is bringing in a private investigator to examine what is left of the mansion.
He also wonders why no water originally flowed from the nearest hydrant, which he said took 20 minutes to open.
Burned tools, and even an old dartboard retaining a single dart, littered the floor of the mansion's main room as Roperto and his foreman, David Salazar, Falls Church, Va., looked to salvage what they could and plan what they might do to restore the devastated building.
Roperto bought the mansion in May 2012 from the township, which had fought for many years to save the building that Neale, one of the county's best-known and best-liked coal barons, had built in the early 1900s.
The $400,000 in damage is close to the amount of money Roperto said he put into the restoration.
Salazar said he and his crew of three men had worked on the mansion for 17 months.
"I started with carpentry, then the roof," he said. "(I) installed all the roof, removed all the floors, replaced the floor beams."
On the south side of the mansion, one room, the library, retains a working door, walls and a floor. The adjoining bedroom, however, is gutted.
"It was almost finished," Salazar said of the bedroom.
The ceiling no longer covers the main room, which was the mansion's largest. Windows are shattered and the room contains much of the ruined and charred roof.
"I'm sick," Roperto said. "This was a dream for me."
He said that dream started taking shape after his wife of 55 1/2 years died. He said his doctor recommended the project to keep busy.
"Everything we did was so perfect, so right," including zoned heating systems, redone floors and water-repellent materials.
Unfortunately, Roperto had not been able to obtain fire insurance for the property before the blaze, having been turned down by one company.
"It wasn't that I didn't try," said Roperto, who had obtained liability insurance.
Salazar said he thinks the mansion can be salvaged, although it will take a month just to clean up the damage.
Roperto said he will need financial help, and a fund has been set up at First National Bank of Minersville for donations. Donations can be sent to the Neale Mansion Rebuilding Fund, First National Bank of Minersville, 260 Sunbury St., Minersville, PA 17954.
He also hopes that historical societies can help.
"We have to get it cleaned up," he said. "We're just at the beginning of this again. We're going to have to figure out what we're going to do and how we're going to do it."