Travis Clarke, aka Mr. Garage Door of Peachtree City, was called out to a home where the door wouldn’t close all the way. When Clarke arrived he found that the problem was bigger than a quick fix, and the homeowner was a disabled, retired hero. 

First, the door itself was the wrong size for the opening, and it also hadn’t been installed properly, so it wouldn’t close properly. Later, Clarke also found that the door’s opening mechanism was also broken. So he replaced both for free. Why? Both because he said it was the right thing to do and this hero had made an impact on Travis’ life and family some twenty years earlier. 

About this hero, when Clarke got to the home, “He comes to the door in a wheelchair. We got to talking and I ask him how he lost his leg, and he said he got bit by a brown recluse spider three years ago. He was missing his right leg from the hip down.”

The man in the wheelchair was Robert Harkins. He told Clarke it happened overnight about three years ago—he said he went to bed and woke up three weeks later in the hospital. They had to amputate his leg. Until his spider bite, Harkins had been a firefighter. 

Harkins had worked as a firefighter for almost 20 years, but had to leave duty due to the injury before his retirement would have fully kicked in. 

When Clarke found out that Harkins had been a firefighter that long, he asked about whether he’d been working in 2005, when Clarke’s family faced an unimaginable tragedy.

“I said, ‘I don’t know if you were there or not, if you remember this, but in 2005, my brother died in Peachtree City and the dive team had to go out and find his body during a hurricane flood.’ And he said, he remembered that.” Harkins had been on the dive team. “He says, ‘You don’t remember everything, but there’s a few that stick with you.’”

Harkins recalled diving all through the night until his shift ended at 6 a.m. The body of Clarke’s 18-year-old brother Danen was found at 9 a.m. 

“It was pretty big news back then. He and three of his friends were out there playing in the waters. My cousin got sucked underneath, so they were looking for him. Then, my brother got sucked underneath. The cousin came up downriver, but my brother never came back up,” said Clarke. Clarke’s cousin survived with a foot injury. 

Harkins told Clarke stories of that night, “and I thanked him for spending all night searching for my brother’s body.”

As Clarke was leaving Harkins, house, he’d given him a price for a fix, but he wanted to do more than providing the service. “I wanted to see if this is something that we could do pro bono to help him out. I just felt like he really needed a whole door. So I called my supplier, Southeast Door Technologies, who I buy my doors from and told him the story.” Clarke’s supplier took care of the door, and Clarke was able to donate the service time and the opener.

Travis Clarke was born and raised in Peachtree City, and still lives locally with his wife and five children between the ages of 11 and 22. His oldest son Ethan works in the Mr. Garage Door business with him. 

Clarke said, “I wanted to help him out, because of his service in the fire department, especially spending an entire night. Danen went missing probably around sundown. And so all through the night, they were out there in water moccasin infested floodwaters looking for his body. I wanted to do something for him because he did something for my family in a very tragic time for us.”

Clarke and Mr. Garage Door of Peachtree City installed Harkins new door and opener and left him all smiles in the process.