Dad Turns Hurricane Destruction into Special Gift for Daughters (Exclusive)

A year after Hurricane Helene, Butler Taylor says repairs haven’t stopped in his town of Arden, N.C. 

The difficult recovery was part of the reason the father of two repurposed an oak tree that had fallen during the storm. Now, it’s an interactive structure for his young daughters — one that required 25 trips to the hardware store to build.

“Even though bad things happen, you can’t just stop,” says Taylor, 43, of the lesson he wants to teach his daughters, Della, 9, and Cora, 6. “You can’t throw up your hands and quit. You got to put your head down and keep going.”

Taylor estimates the tree is between 80 and 100 years old, but admits he hasn’t been able to bring himself to cut through the trunk to count the growth rings.

The oak tree, which his grandfather watched grow, was an important fixture in Taylor’s own childhood. He remembers having picnics and eating ice cream under its protective branches. Years later, his daughters enjoyed soaring on the tree swing.

“They loved that swing because it was big, and shady, and huge,” he says. “That’s probably the most brutal thing — watching them swing in it and now they don’t get to.” 

On Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, the effects of the Category 4 hurricane began to hit western North Carolina after making landfall near Perry, Fla. In just a matter of hours, damaging winds and record-breaking flooding started to devastate many areas, especially the higher terrains of the southeastern Appalachians.

At least 71 indirect deaths were linked to the storm, including 23 in South Carolina, 21 in North Carolina, 16 in Florida, nine in Georgia and one each in Tennessee and Virginia, according to data compiled by the National Hurricane Center.

In addition to those direct fatalities, the government agency said there were 176 direct fatalities caused by either wind, storm surge, flooding or tornadoes. Additionally, three people “died of unknown causes related to the storm,” which brought the total number of known Helene-related deaths to 250.

That Friday, Taylor and his wife Kindra went to Raleigh for a bluegrass festival, but the trip quickly turned dire. Butler wasn’t able to reach his mom, who was watching the two girls, for almost all of Saturday, Sept. 27, because there was no cell service. 

“We were terrified,” he says of the lack of information about his family’s safety. While traveling back the next day, Butler and his wife had to take multiple routes to get back to their house because of fallen debris and damage to roadways. 

Fortunately, their home and property were mostly undamaged, except for the fallen tree — and once they arrived, his mom and daughters met them at the house, which was a “wonderful” reunion.

More family members came as they bunkered down together. They went without power or food for weeks and the surrounding area was “pretty devastated,” Taylor says. But he’s proud of how they rallied together.

“If you needed a chainsaw, you used your neighbor’s chainsaw,” he remembers. “If you needed food, your neighbor would share their food.”

As the area collectively healed, the dad turned his attention to the massive tree in his yard. His girls were having too much fun climbing the branches of the fallen oak to remove it.

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“I’m no carpenter, but I wanted to have a platform where the branches still came up through,” says Taylor, who took a couple of months to build the multi-tiered structure. Built on the ground, the re-envisioned tree fort incorporates the fallen tree’s branches. It was a success. He says his daughters enjoy climbing and playing in the tree in its new iteration. 

“They’ll have that memory,” says Taylor. “They’ll still be able to play on the tree that my grandfather knew.”