George Carlin once said, “a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” Fruitland firefighter, instructor and artist Tina White, who lives in one of the largest houses that’s ever felt cozy, couldn’t agree more.
“Some may say Dennis let me build this house like I paint,” White said. “Just like my decorating, I have no training so I work backwards. When I paint a picture I would see a mat or a frame that I like and I’d paint a picture to go with it. So I built the home to go with all the things from my past 20-plus years that I knew that I would want to put into it.”
The “things” in question are the mementos from a rich life filled with love and laughter, children and grandchildren, and the art that defines her. With White, however, the location of her home was as equally essential as the frame she filled up with memories.
“I was a foster child,” she explained. “I was moved to Fruitland into the foster home of Jesse and Betty Miller on July 3rd, 1958. I was eleven months old, but for the longest time I thought of July 3rd as my birthday because to me, that was going home; that’s when I first moved to Fruitland. So when we started looking to buy, to move back to Fruitland from my home off of Nanticoke Road, I knew Rowen’s would be perfect for both of us—the perfect property for me because I grew up playing on the Glasgow Farm, and that’s what this is, and perfect for Dennis because it is so close to the hospital and golf, and has the pool he so enjoys.”
The kitchen she carefully designed is filled with small personal touches, from the granite counters curved to seat all the abundant members of her family, to a painting she bought from her late uncle, Tom Jones, which resides in one of two adjacent dining areas.
A large, rustic table restored from the siding of an old barn highlights the second dining area. The table is neatly dressed up by an ornate set of Christmas-gifted chairs and an antique bronze-polished chandelier, which she first fell in love with while touring the model in Rowen’s Mill.
In the master bedroom, a sentimental highlight hangs on the wall: an old two-toned dress just large enough for a child.
“This was my dress when I was five,” White recalled. “My foster mom’s Aunt Bessie made it, and then when I was eighteen and my family had a house fire we lost most everything. And this dress—my mom salvaged and took it to the dry cleaner. She let me have it a couple years ago. I just always remember feeling pretty in it.”
Upstairs, in an old wooden dresser in the guest bedroom, White keeps over two decades of newspaper articles, awards, pictures, and other tokens of her time as a firefighter. She was a Charter member of the Mt. Vernon Fire Department and the first woman firefighter in Fruitland, where she still serves. White also teaches EMT, Confined Space Rescue and Hazmat for Maryland Fire and Rescue.
The cherry on top is the art studio which spills over with paintings and is the only room in the house that seems even vaguely messy or haphazard. A photo of White’s uncle, whom she credits with inspiring her to take up painting, hangs on her easel. An artist’s drafting table doubles as a palette, and several works in progress hang on the wall waiting to be transformed into future masterpieces.
This is White’s home with Chodnicki—a luxurious box of living nostalgia collected from a full life that’s still very much a vibrant work in progress.