GoFundMe campaign aims to help Sussex family whose car was crushed by tree  

Frankford residents Al Cook and Liz Johnson-Cook had their only car destroyed April 30, after a sudden storm with 50+mph wind gusts blew over a massive tree in the yard of the home where they are living, with the tree landing directly on their car.

While the couple is thankful that no one was in the car at the time, the car was crushed beyond recovery, leaving them without a vehicle of their own. So a family friend, M. Patricia Titus, is reaching out to the community in hopes that generous and caring neighbors will do what a big insurance company has declined to do: make the couple whole again with a replacement for their destroyed vehicle.

“The car was more than a decade old and had more than 200,000 miles on the odometer,” Titus said, “so they made what seemed to be a reasonable decision at the time, and decided not to spend the extra money on comprehensive car insurance when finances have been very tight for a good while. The odds of something like this happening were nearly nonexistent. It was truly bizarre. No one could have predicted that. I’m still shaking my head.”

Titus said the car had been parked in a spot near the driveway entrance where it was rarely left, and was only there that day because a man had come that afternoon to repair a lawn mower and he parked in the usual parking spot. When the winds came up a few hours later, the couple decided to wait until the weather cleared before moving their car.

It was an extreme case of bad luck that the winds that night gusted in just exactly the direction and strength that brought down an apparently healthy 50-foot-tall tree directly onto the couple’s car.

“They didn’t realize what had happened at first,” Titus said. “A neighbor, Greg Welch, called 911 to report the tree having fallen, and the Frankford Volunteer Fire Company was quickly on scene to cut off the ends of the tree that intruded into the street. The call was recorded as a fire call on the FVFC website when they checked to see what the sirens were about, so they assumed it was a fire a few doors down – until they went outside and saw their nearly new-to-them car crushed like a wrecking ball had been dropped on top of it. Liz was just devastated.”

She said Welch kindly came back with his own chainsaw and chopped off enough of the tree that the driveway was accessible, but the impact of losing their car was a blow for the couple.

“It had been a gift from their new son-in-law, who had repaid them in kind after they had given him their only car so that he, their daughter and the couple’s new baby could establish their own home in West Virginia, which was a greater need at the time,” she said.

The couple’s son-in-law is a mechanic and had selected an inexpensive older car to give his new in-laws that he could still make serviceable, so it held value not only as their only vehicle but from having been a good bargain that had been examined and worked on by their son-in-law, nearly cost-free.

“Their older car was one he could keep running far more inexpensively than they could, by virtue of doing the work himself, so giving it to him made sense,” Titus said. “His kind gift of a car he knew he could make work for them was both touching and very practical. They really appreciated it.”

Al Cook is a professional musician who had lost nearly all his regular income during the pandemic closures, as well as having recently undergone heart surgery. Paid performances had all but entirely ceased in March 2020, and he had just a few more before having major heart surgery in the fall. Along with the closures, medical issues necessitated a hiatus for his band, Tranzfusion, and with such a significant amount of their income lost, additional insurance coverage wasn’t an expense the couple could afford.

Then, less than two months after getting the car, paying to register it and insuring it, that car was totally destroyed. And to top it off, the insurance company that held the policy on the home they are living in refused to cover even a penny of the loss. That left them without a car, without any compensation from insurance to even begin to get a replacement car, and still missing a major portion of their usual income that might have helped them buy another vehicle.

“I’m really hoping their friends, the public, lovers of music, people with good hearts, will step up to help them get a replacement car,” Titus said. “It doesn’t have to be new or fancy. It just has to run reliably and safely, and have enough room in it to transport Al’s instruments and equipment – an SUV of some sort, preferably, because that’s sometimes a lot of equipment.”

With many places starting to reopen with the reduction of pandemic restrictions, Al will soon be performing again, so having a vehicle that he can use to get himself and his gear to gigs is a necessity.

Their son, James, is also a young pro-level drummer who’s looking to begin playing gigs of his own, Titus noted. “James is autistic, and his special talent for drumming means a lot to him and his family, so having a vehicle that can carry his drum kit to future gigs would be helpful. And Liz would really like to be able to go see that new grandbaby once in a while.

“I’m really hoping that people can step up to help, with a dollar or $20, or whatever they can spare,” she added. “I’ve seen this community come together so many times to support neighbors who have fallen on hard times, been dealing with illness or had an unexpected tragedy like this, with a tree falling right on their car. I’d like to give them a start on a car replacement fund. I’m not sure when they’d be able to replace it on their own, if ever. And in the meantime, they’re reliant on rides from others and borrowed cars.”

The GoFundMe campaign is online at gofundme.com/f/help-al-liz-replace-car-crushed-by-falling-tree. Titus said she picked an arbitrary figure of $5,000 in hopes of helping the couple get a suitable, reliable vehicle to get them back on the road again, but everything that is donated will go toward purchasing a replacement.