CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Ask anyone in Taylor County about furniture and the name McMahan will come up. It started with eight brothers in the 1940s that all got in the business together. Eugene McMahan's father was one of those brothers.
“I knew I wanted to do this when I first started. When I first got out of college, I knew this is what I wanted to do," Eugene recalls. "It's the kind of work you really enjoy and it's challenging every day. It's fun work but it's hard work."
Euguene followed in his father's footsteps and is one of the few McMahans who have stayed in the business. Now his son is working for him. By the early 2000s, Campbellsville Handmade Cherry furniture was doing half-a-million dollars in business a year. That's before the recession hit and before tragedy struck.
"The fire was Oct.15, 2010,” Patrick McMahan said. “It completely destroyed everything except for the concrete pad we're standing on and about half of our showroom pieces, which we carried out while it was burning."
Fire tore through the Campbellsville factory and showroom. The lumber and chemicals inside igniting it like a matchbox.
“It flattened it to the ground,” Patrick said. “[There was] nothing we could do but stand there and watch and try to save what we could."
Eugene remembers it with tears in his eyes. “It was terrible,” he says. “I was at the doctor’s office and when I came up over the hill I could see the smoke and I knew that was it. But nobody got hurt and that was the main thing.”
No one was hurt but the business was. More than $60,000 in customers' work had to be replaced, not to mention the equipment and inventory. Most everyone, including Eugene, thought it was the end.
That’s when Patrick stepped up. “If I didn't do it, that's the last McMahan. My dad turned 70-years-old this year. If I didn't get down here and do it that was it."
But instead it was a new beginning. The father and son team used the insurance money to buy new equipment and get started on construction right away. Within four months, they opened their new warehouse.
"Everything's grown locally in Kentucky,” Patrick explains as he tours the factory. “All the cherry comes mostly from the Appalachian region."
They are back up and running. Business took a hit but they are sticking to their roots, using all local materials and making everything by hand.
It would save some money for them to mass produce, but they do it because they love it. They say they will keep doing it because well, it's in their blood.
“We're not getting rich off this,” Patrick said. “We don't make a lot of money but we like doing it. I take great pride in putting something in someone’s house and them saying ‘that's beautiful.’
“That's the reward you get,” Euguene said.
