Mike Werner had to face the media.
His “forever home” was in ashes atop one of the blackened mountain ridges in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Also in ashes on another ridge: the 77-unit condominium complex he and his wife Cindy had managed for 30-plus years.
Yet, as mayor of Gatlinburg, Werner stood before several dozen members of the media the day after wildfire swept into the tourist town 10 years ago in the drought-stricken Great Smoky Mountains.
Rising death toll
The death toll would rise to three in Gatlinburg and 11 others in the surrounding county with nearly 200 injured when sustained winds of 40-50 mph, gusting to 87 mph, spread a wildfire from the nearby national park into large swaths of Gatlinburg on the evening of Monday, Nov. 28. More than 14,000 residents and tourists were evacuated.
The Werners had gone to Knoxville that morning when smoke became unbearable at their home. But soon after 6 p.m., phone calls began pouring in with news of the unfolding disaster in Gatlinburg, just four days after Thanksgiving. Within five hours, nearly 2,500 homes, cabins, businesses and other structures were lost or damaged as wind-blown embers ignited more than 17,000 acres.
On Tuesday morning, after getting a distant look at the charred mountain where his home once stood, Werner arrived at the local library, which had become the emergency response command center.
‘Lord … give me the words’
Within moments, he was joining various officials to address TV crews and other members of the media gathered outside.
“There were probably 50 reporters there, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, you name it,” Werner recounted. “I was scared to death. … I remember just praying, ‘Lord, I don’t have a clue what I’m going to say. Would you please just give me the words.’”
He immediately sensed that God was answering his prayer: “Just say what I tell you to say.”
Then Werner spoke: “We’re going to be okay.”
Reconstructing his comments at the news conference: “We can get through this because the people are so resilient and so strong. We can make it. … We’ve been through different things before, never to this extent, but we’ll be okay.”
Moment of faith 40 year in the making
That moment of faith was 40 years in the making.
It began when Werner, a construction worker, got a haircut in Peoria, Illinois, in 1976.
The lady who normally cut his hair wasn’t at the shop that day, so a young lady named Judy volunteered.
“It was like she never quit talking,” Werner said. “She was so excited” about the return of Christ and the end times.
“It seemed like five minutes, but it was an hour and a half to two hours” of Judy describing “things I never heard before. … It was something that got my attention and really opened my eyes, that Christ is going to return.”
Returning home to Princeville, “I wasn’t used to praying much, but I prayed … if this is real.” He started reading the Bible with “a real hunger for the Word,” soaking it up “like a sponge.” Several days later he called Judy to ask, “Is there some place we can go to learn more about this?”
Judy suggested the Jesus Barn, a contemporary worship center in a renovated barn in Morton, Illinois.
On their first visit, Werner was “hanging on every word” spoken by an evangelist from Texas, Sammy Tippit. At the end of his message, Tippit gave an invitation, or altar call. “I thought everybody in the place would go forward, but I was the only one.
‘Life-changing moment’
“I didn’t care. I was just focused on the fact that I had an opportunity to accept Christ as my Lord and Savior.” After a prayer with Tippit, Werner met with a Jesus Barn staffer in “just answering any questions I had.”
“It was life-changing, just incredible” to learn that “there was hope, that you could give your life to Christ and be a changed person, which changed a lot because I had been pretty wild.”
In Werner’s new relationship with Christ, “you could believe that what you were praying that Jesus heard it” and that he would be heaven-bound. “Before, I never knew. It was just questionable. Would you do enough good things? Would you be a good enough person?”
His view of life had been “to live and get everything you can out of this world,” but now he understood “the most important relationship that has any value is yours with Christ.”
Departure from upbringing
The “basic simplicity of the Gospel and the Bible” was quite a departure from his upbringing. “I grew up Catholic in a small town,” he said, “so I was an altar boy serving Mass probably three weeks out of the month because there were so few Catholic boys.”
Werner and his wife at the time “had a burning desire to learn more” and began attending worship at the Jesus Barn every Sunday as well as other gatherings during the week.
When the pastor voiced an interest in moving to Gatlinburg, Werner came for a visit with his family. “We walked the streets of Gatlinburg and thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing,’” from the abundance of fireplaces to the smell of caramel corn. “I just fell in love with it like so many people do.” In 1980, they loaded their belongings to make the move in a horse trailer pulled by a half-ton pickup truck.
After working for a surveyor and then a construction company, Werner became a salesman for a new condominium development and then co-owner of an indoor go-kart track. He returned to the condominium complex where he and his second wife, Cindy, were its managers at the time of the 2016 Gatlinburg fire.
Werner had become involved in the Gatlinburg Convention & Visitors Bureau in the 1990s and, as its president in 1999, was encouraged by friends he had made over the years to run for the City Commission.
“Like anything I get involved with, I put my whole heart into it,” Werner, a member of First Baptist Church Gatlinburg, said. “In about six weeks, about three hours a day, I went to every home in Gatlinburg and asked for their vote.”
The mayor is selected by the five members of the City Commission. Werner was in the mayor’s post when the fire occurred and has been elected to the position ever since.
Down but not out
Werner’s assertion in 2016 that Gatlinburg, perhaps the most-visited mountain town in the eastern United States, will be okay has proven true.
Protective steps were taken the night of the fire to marshal local and other communities’ fire units to drain most of Gatlinburg’s water tanks in order to saturate the town’s primary tourist district.
“We knew if we lost the downtown, it would take decades to return,” Werner said. “Our only industry is tourism, so if that was destroyed, it would have been disastrous for so many people.” Among the structures outside that perimeter was Roaring Fork Baptist Church, which has been rebuilt by Tennessee Baptists.
Werner and other officials conducted daily news conferences for about a week, often addressing the question, Would people come back or not? “So many people love Gatlinburg,” he said, “and they were really concerned and wanted to know what was going on.” The town had not been destroyed, local leaders told the media, and such attractions as Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, the Ober Mountain recreation area and the Space Needle remained intact.
‘Through this together’
Werner and others also visited families sleeping on cots in the new 86,000-square-foot Rocky Top Sports World basketball and volleyball facility. Their message: “We can get through this together” while understandably grappling with the thought that the fire was “something that you never dreamed would ever happen here.”
At one meeting, Jack Parton, the county school superintendent and former Gatlinburg mayor, voiced the motto, “Mountain Tough.” Werner began using it, adding that “we have a strong, strong faith in God.”
Dolly’s impact
With the passing of Dolly Parton on Aug. 24, Werner remembers being on a conference call with one of the singer’s key associates. “Do you think Dolly would be interested?” someone asked about helping with the recovery.
“Let’s ask her,” the associate responded.
“So she called her up and Dolly said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it, definitely,’” Werner recounted.
It became the My People Fund which provided $10,000 each to 900 families, fueled by more than $9 million raised in a December telethon.
‘I will answer you’
Werner continued reading his Bible in the weeks and months after the fire. “The one Scripture I like best is Jeremiah 33:3: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know.’”
“When you’re so confused and you have no idea which way to turn,” Werner said, “call to the Lord.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Art Toalston, longtime Baptist writer and editor, wrote this article.
