The Whipple Ripple – by Sharon Mehdi

I’ve never met Roger Whipple, even though I heard he lives just around the corner. I’ve never even seen a picture of him. But I love him.

Roger Whipple is a designer and builder of artful, craftsman-style houses and cabins and magical barnlike structures that look for all the world like they were created a hundred years ago. I know this because I live in one of them. Some say it was the first house he built in Jacksonville in the 1990s, and maybe it was. All I know for sure is that local artists, Sue and Steve Bennett, were one of the first owners of the house. Sue said living here was like living in a dollhouse.

When I and my ever-so-grumpy housemate moved into the blue house on 8th Street one cold, stormy day last January, grumpy housemate was immediately and spectacularly transformed from Cora Curmudgeon to Little Mary Sunshine. Those first weeks when we’d meet in the kitchen each morning, she’d fairly shriek, “I LOVE this house. This is the BEST house I’ve ever lived in. I NEVER want to move!” Even now, ten months later, when she comes in from a walk, she gasps and squeals and does this little twirly thing. “Aren’t we just the luckiest people in the world to get to live here?” And I agree that indeed we are.

So what exactly is it about the house—and the man who built it—that creates such unmitigated glee? And what about all the other houses Roger Whipple built in Jacksonville—I’ve heard there are nine, but don’t quote me on that. Do the people who live in those houses meet in the kitchen each morning and marvel at the wonderment of their surroundings? Do they twirl and squeal when they return from walks? Do the friends who come to visit them, like the friends who come to visit us, walk in and say,” Ohhhhhhhh. This house is amazing!”?

Sometimes I wonder if Jacksonville is the sweet, kind, Mayberry sort of town it is because of these houses. Think about it. Maybe it’s some kind of Whipple Ripple.

The houses—well at least ours, and I’m assuming the rest as well—are works of art. With each home he built, Roger Whipple recreated an era—a reminder of a sweeter, saner, safer time. No granite countertops here. Ours are all polished wood. The stain on the wainscoting matches the sideboards and the trim around the windows and the crown moulding. The floors in every room, including the bathrooms, are five-inch wide, honey-colored fir strips that glisten and gleam every time we mop them with Murphy Oil Soap. The windows are all single pane. The ceilings are so high it takes our tallest friend with his tallest ladder to change a light bulb.

What kind of creative mind and purposeful spirit is able and willing to stay so true to an earlier day, an earlier art? And what was it—the sheer joy of creation, perhaps?—that Roger Whipple wove into each corner and crevice that alters moods and changes lives? I don’t know for sure, but in some curious, mysterious sort of way, maybe my once grumpy housemate and I are part of the answer. We spend each day with a heart full of gratitude for the opportunity to live in this town, on this street, in this house. Who knows, maybe some of that gratitude rubs off on the people we pass, and the pups we pet, and the paths we trod. Maybe, just by living in this house, we are becoming part of the Whipple Ripple.

Publisher’s Note: Shortly before this issue went to press, a delighted Roger Whipple got wind of the article and paid a visit to the author and her formerly grumpy housemate. The women gave him a tour of the first house he built in Jacksonville nearly a quarter of a century ago, were enchanted by his stories, and according to the author, are still smiling.