Tomorrow, a business that was a local fixture even before Mike and Kim Stapp purchased it in 2000 is celebrating its grand reopening.
Stapp Automotive Repair, voted "Best Auto Repair in North Georgia" by readers of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in January, was hammered when a tornado slammed Ringgold on April 27.
From left, Stapp Automotive Repair employees Bill Beagan and Dakota Young, owners Kim and Mike Stapp and employee Josh Beagan show off the new repair shop."We'd closed at 6 p.m. and everyone had gone home," Kim Stapp said.
About two hours later, Ringgold was turned inside out and upside down.
Stapp said she and her husband "drove down here about 15 minutes after the storm and thought we'd been lucky."
In the dark, they entered the building at 7118 Nashville St. that at first glance seemed to have only suffered cosmetic damage, she said.
"Only three quart bottles of oil were knocked off a shelf in the parts store," she said.
But relief turned to disbelief and tears when she opened the door separating the automotive parts store stock room and garage.
"The whole shop was gone," she said.
The roof had collapsed - a piece was found wrapped around a car at the adjacent Chrysler dealership - and the five-bay repair shop was a tangled mess.
A mess, yes. Out of business, no.
"We had the parts side open in about a week, and Mike stayed here for four nights until the power came back on," Stapp said.
While awaiting restoration of electric service, the shop used batteries to power its computers.
Now the shop looks and is brand new.
The new building is taller by about 2 feet, allowing roll-up doors, and has a military-grade epoxy floor coating rather than the plain concrete of old.
And while it looks pretty much the same - "perhaps it's even better" - Stapp said a few things, including a 3-by-4-foot metal sign, are missing from the new building.
"About two weeks after the storm a lady from Madisonville, Tenn., [about 85 miles away] called to say, 'I've got one of your signs in my pasture.'"