In the early morning of January 26, 1983, a fire broke out in the attic of Schulze Home Furnishings, a family-owned appliance retailer and repair business in Richmond, Texas.

“Hours later, it was determined to be an electrical fire in the upper attic caused by a squirrel chewing on the wrong wire,” said Stacy Schulze, who was 8 at the time but still remembers the smell of burnt paper that came with the fire.

“As far as we know, only the squirrel died,” she said.

A local newspaper, the Fort Bend Herald, reported that morning that Schulze Home Furnishings, which had recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, had been “destroyed.” But the Schulzes, who specialized in repairing antique items, set about rebuilding their business.

“One of the tasks in rebuilding the company was to go through all the old ledgers that were scorched, damaged or waterlogged … to figure out who owed what to whom,” Schulze said. “There were no backups.”

Some customers, knowing the books were damaged, came by and told them how much they owed. “People came back and said, ‘I’m still solvent and we’re going to keep paying,'” she said.

Stacy Schulze’s grandfather, Arthur D. Schulze, began repairing radios in 1933. “Over the years, as more and more parts of the county got electricity and more electrical equipment became available, he sold and repaired them,” she said.

Stacy’s father, Kenneth Schulze, eventually took over the business and ran it until his death in 2015, despite the fact that it became increasingly difficult to find replacement parts for the equipment he worked on. “That’s probably the thing I still take with me the most,” Stacy Schulze said. “Keeping something going is almost in my blood.”

Click on the audio player above to hear Schulze’s story.