THE HOBBIT HOUSE has been a labor of love and a family affair for Linda Kysar and her family. Linda’s two brothers, Mark and Lyle, came up with the idea to locate a stump and put a roof on it. Linda asked Lyle to pick out a special stump while a friend of his was logging seven acres of the land.
LINDA KYSAR’S brother, Lyle Abernathy, is the creator and carpenter of her newly-fashioned Hobbit House.
THE ROOF OF the Hobbit House was actually fashioned out of an old sauna, or some kind of shed that nobody wanted. Linda now has a whimsical reminder from the front window of her home of the man she shared more than 43 years of her life with, her husband David.
When a person wants to pay tribute to their late husband, it helps to have a brother who has “his fingers in pies,’’ as Yacolt resident Linda Kysar says.
Kysar’s brother, Lyle Abernathy, is the creator and carpenter of her newly-fashioned Hobbit House.
“I don’t know if you’d really say it’s a memorial, but the stump is off my husband’s first piece of property that he ever bought at about the age of 18,” Kysar said.
David Kysar passed away in 2008, but he left behind a legacy that is embodied in some ways by what his brother-in-law (Abernathy) has created. David Kysar began his working career as a logger at a young age, ultimately working in that field for 20 years. He was drafted in the Army in 1962, during the Vietnam War, and was put through school to work with ground missiles that soon became obsolete. He was then assigned to train other men in the Mojave Desert and shortly after completing that aspect of his service he and Linda were married on June 12, 1964. From there they were sent to Fort Chaffee, AR, El Paso, TX, and he also spent time at Fort Lewis and reported to Fort Vancouver once a month.
After the service, David returned to logging and the two pieces of property he had purchased in North Clark County. The plot across from Cedar Creek is where the stump came from to build the Hobbit House. David, himself, excelled at woodworking.
David built the home that was later remodeled by daughter Molly (Kangas) and husband Dallas. The remodel included the addition of an apartment at the residence, where Linda still lives, close by to her daughter and son-in-law. Linda explained that David cut all the lumber for the original house and completed construction before they were married. The Kysars later had five children.
When he left the logging industry in the mid 1980s, David started a cabinet shop business (Dave’s Custom Cabinets) and brought his two oldest boys, Daniel and Derek, and a son-in-law, Dallas Kangas, into the business with him.
The Hobbit House has been a labor of love and a family affair. Linda’s two brothers, Mark and Lyle, came up with the idea to locate a stump and put a roof on it. Linda asked her brother, Lyle, if he’d pick out a special stump while a friend of his was logging seven acres of the land and he came back with one that was about eight feet in width. It was then set where her husband’s shop once stood. Her granddaughter, Gwen Kangas, drew a roof line and Lyle’s brother-in-law, Tony, drew up computer plans for it.
“He (Tony) drew out the plan and then my brother started on it and he had so much fun building it and every once in a while he’d say ‘you gotta get over here and see this,’ ” Linda said.
When Lyle Abernathy is not fashioning hobbit houses, he works at a logging company as a safety manager and does stump grinding on the side. He’s also patented a gate closer that closes gates automatically. No wonder his sister says he has his “fingers in pies.’’
Linda said that the roof to the Hobbit House was actually fashioned out of an old sauna, or some kind of shed that nobody wanted. The boards were green, but Abernathy breathed a second life into them. And with that, Linda has a whimsical reminder from the front window of her home of the man she shared more than 43 years of her life with.
