For Bill and Sherri Williams, rebuilding the Ray Roberts Marina to its full capacity means more than just business.
It’s a way to honor their family’s legacy and to show their customers that they care about the things that matter to them.
“Every boater here has [Bill’s] phone number,” Sherri said. “... They know they can call him, and they know whatever they need, we’ll do our best.”
Bill added to why it matters so much to them.
“They lost their stuff, so it’s about them,” he said. “It’s about them. It’s not about me and her.”
Sherri’s father, Floyd “Wally” Wallace, built the marina in 1994, and it opened in ’95.
“This was our first storm since 1995,” she said. “You wake up when you go through something like that. You wake up and think, ‘We’re going to do it a little different now.’” For the last 10 months, the Williams have been working to clean up the roughly $8 million of damage and random debris left in the wake of the May 25 tornadoes.
“We had 118 boat slips—one boat house flipped on top of the other, along with everybody’s property in their boats,” she said.
They also lost the fuel dock, a sizeable chunk of the restaurant at the top of the hill and several of the RVs that were on the property during the storm.
Thankfully, Sherri said, they made it through the ordeal with only minor injuries among the people onsite that harrowing night.
“You just count your lucky stars that you’re still here to deal with it,” she said. “We were here. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through.”
The majority of people who weathered the storm at the marina that night made it into the restaurant’s walk-in cooler to take shelter, but a few were in their RVs and boats throughout the storm.
As a result, the Williams have invested in a 150-person above ground shelter, bolted into the concrete beside the restaurant, and they have given each of the residents a key and have invited the neighbors to use it in case of an emergency as well.
“We tell the entire neighborhood, if it’s a bit stormy, it’s open, come use it,” Sherri said.
The clean-up process has been a lengthy one, not just because of the extent of the damage, but also because the Williams have cared to reclaim as many of the belongings they and their customers lost as they could.
“We could just go down there and take a claw and just pick up everything and throw it away, but we would have missed four or five signs that we’ve gotten out of the water that means a whole lot to somebody,” Bill said. “We have two of them this month, and that means the world to them.”
Items like fishing rods that people got from their grandfather and other memories have been retrieved where possible.
Boathouses 1 and 2, which were the ones that were tangled into one another in the storm, have been rebuilt.
Boathouse 3 is being repaired now, with Boathouse 9 next on the list for storm-related repairs.
Three new sections are being constructed in Oklahoma City and will also be installed in the marina.
“Hopefully by May they will be building the new docks,” Sherri said, adding that the plan is to rebuild to the full 500-slip capacity.
Last on the list to be rebuilt will be the restaurant and the fuel store, but in the meantime, the Williams have a temporary fuel tank set up, and they said they are grateful Lone Star Lodge and Marina’s fuel store is now an op- tion on the lake to help meet that need.
The majority of boaters, especially those who lost their slips, have been loyal, she added.
“The boaters have been great,” Sherri said. “Even the ones—I have to say, and we were kind of astonished, the best boaters have been those that lost slips. ... We have promised them all they can get their slip back.”
She also said there’s “a testament for tiny homes” in the one on the property that withstood the storm.
“They lost some windows, they lost some shingles, but it was there because those things have hurricane straps on them,” Sherri said.
Sherri spoke, too, of how great Robbie Merritt, Mark Stewart and the other Ray Roberts Lake State Park staff have been to work with.
“We’ve been through several lake managers, and these are the best,” she said, adding that Merritt “has been amazing through all of this.”
Sherri also expressed gratitude for the Ponder bass fishing team and the entire Ponder athletic department for coming out to help right after the storm.
Another group, who Sherri call the A Team “because they’re here yearround,” who has helped make the cleanup process easier by helping with needs at Boathouse
9, saying “these guys are priceless.” “While we’re dealing with all of this, they’re replacing their water lines and
running new electrical wire,” Sherri said.
Two of those A Team members—Dennis Keith and Bill Huthmacher, were at work fixing water lines that developed a leak during the recent extended deep freeze.
“This is a big family here,” Huthmacher said. “We all get along well together. We do dinners together. We do all sorts of stuff together. ... When the tornado came through, we said, ‘OK, what do we have to do to get ourselves back in operation?’ and that’s what we did.”
Keith echoed that sentiment almost verbatim.
He added that the group works well with the Williams and that they pride themselves on being pretty self-sufficient.
“People that come to this boathouse from other marinas say it’s a unique thing that we’ve got going here, and we have a great time,” Huthmacher said.
He also credited the Williams with doing as much as they can to get the marina back to its previous condition.
“The reality is that there’s not a lot of people out there that do this kind of work,” Keith said. “So if you get everybody that’s available, it’s still a fairly small number of people.”
