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This is how Gilbert begins to rebuild from the 'Goons'

6 11
12.07.2024

There are roughly three days left to save one of the oldest homes in Gilbert.

If something isn’t done, it will be demolished.

A number of people have worked hard to try to save this significant piece of the town’s history, but a bigger, more important story has drowned them out.

And that’s a problem.

How do you save a key part of Gilbert’s history when all anyone wants to talk about are the “Gilbert Goons” — the youth crime wave that broke over this town?

People who want to build a stronger community by saving its history have been muted by a more negative story that demands everyone’s attention.

Now comes their last chance.

What they’re working to save has substance and meaning for a town that has to reckon with its dark underbelly.

The Clare House was constructed in 1918 in the final year of what people then called “The Great War,” because no one fathomed there would later be a Second World War.

The home — which later became Bergies Coffee Roast House — was a modest structure built by a family that came west from Missouri and Kansas to a part of the Sonoran Desert that would eventually become the town of Gilbert.

They played a key role in the supply of U.S. troops who were fighting The Hun........

© Arizona Republic


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