Marcellus Rowe appears to be one of those indomitable people you see on the news, who lose everything and keep going with a smile on their face.
We ventured to call his shop five days after the tornado hit Total Image Audio, in Bowling Green, KY, expecting that no one would answer. But he answered as if nothing had happened, and then interrupted the call to politely help a customer. Wait? Wasn’t the shop flattened?
Yes, but he’s operating out of a towing service station in town that is owned by a close friend. He was given three bays at Walker Towing and the customers are coming in.
Rowe’s shop of 20 years took a direct hit from the tornado– the install bays were flattened and the showroom was decimated and lost its roof. Rowe’s in a position right now of waiting on insurance adjusters, knowing that it may take a long while, given all the devastation in the area.
Most of the shop’s inventory was ruined, although they are testing some of it “as we go,” said Rowe. Four cars were in the bay at the time of the tornado, three dealer cars and one customer car, all demolished.
Thursday was Rowe’s first day back. He has two friends that perished in the storm. “So, it could be a lot worse. I’m just happy it was during the night. If it was during the day I’m sure none of us would have made it,” he said. The storm has taken 76 lives (so far) and destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in the state.
Rowe marveled at the “outpouring of all the people who helped us out. I had so many people help me the first day with trucks and trailers, during the days when we were working to get stuff out. People were pulling up with four wheelers and with food and water. A lot of them were strangers, and many friends. I know several of them were customers and they just showed up.”
He gave a special thanks to Junior Walker, his friend at the towing service. “Two other shops have opened up their doors and offered up the same thing,” he said. One was the shop’s main competitor, Poston Electronics. “Mike Cornelius, he offered us to use half his shop. He’s our competitor. There’s two main [12 volt] stores here and he’s one of them.”
Rowe worked for Poston for 18 years, before opening his own shop in 2001.
If anyone wishes to help the store or send words of encouragement, Rowe can be reached at [email protected]
A GoFundMe for industry members hit by the tornado can be found here.
Amy, thanks so much for posting this so our industry can help out! I agree with Isaac that it totally sucks having to jump right back into work like that. It could be a cash flow thing, but it might not be. It could be wanting to honor the work for clients, but the other thing is some of us just like to work and feel some sense of normalcy. Also we have a weird industry, I think most of our clients would still be buying and scheduling work even if we were 4 horsemen deep into the apocalypse! They like to turn it up and tune it all out.
Wow, amazing to hear of the support they are getting, and so sad to hear of the loss of his 2 friends. Huge spirit and commitment to bounce back and keep going so fast. Inspiring.
It’s extremely awesome the support he’s getting… insurance means that rebuilding the shop and stuff is simply an inconvenience, and not a monetary issue. But I am horribly saddened by the capitalist nonsense and requires a shop to be open mere days after a huge event like this. A shop owner (or anyone for that matter) shouldn’t have to worry about setting up a makeshift install bay in a friend’s towing service building to keep the cash flow going to not go underwater. There are much much bigger issues to take care of, I’m willing to bet, than making sure people have their subwoofers installed. The whole thing just seems bizarre to me, I’d have a million things I would want to do and take care of compared to trying to scrounge a makeshift operation a town over, but I guess that’s just me.
I swear we could be 4 horsemen deep into the apocalypse and people would still be trying to find a way to commute to their day job, avoiding the lakes of fire and minions of the underworld just to hit that 9-5 grind.