Randy Rice's anguish simmers just below the surface as he walks through the barren historic home.

And occasionally it erupts.

He points to the place where an antique organ once stood in the front living room of the 1891-vintage home. The room is now bare.

The walls that his parents, the former owners, had covered with Victorian-period wallpaper have been painted butterscotch-yellow. Exposed wires hang where light fixtures, likely as old as the house, hung until not too long ago.

Rice turns and looks out the front window. “And every damn tree has been cut down,” he says, his voice cracking. About 15 of them, by his calculations.

Rice is standing in what has been known as the Parrott House, a reference to the couple who built the four-story home on what originally was a 640-acre homestead.

More recently, the Victorian-era house that looms over Highway 99 South on the south end of Roseburg, has been known as the Pink Lady. That name came from the birthday-cake pink paint job a previous owner bestowed upon the house.

But now, the house seems a shell of its former self, as the most recent owner seems to have abandoned it. More recently, a window has been broken out of a circular turret that tops the house.

Last weekend, vandals threw a brick through a window of the now-red, front door. Shattered glass lies behind the door, near a circular staircase that winds through the center of the home.

Rice said he called The News-Review because “I don't know what to do. I've got to do something. I don't know what to do. I'm just a pizza cook,” said the manager of an Abby's pizza parlor in Roseburg.

Jeffery Brown of Idleyld Park most recently bought the house with his ex-wife, Anna. Jeffery Brown filed for bankruptcy in April. Neither he nor the attorney representing him in his bankruptcy case returned calls for comment.

Restored to original Victorian

Randy Rice's parents, Sandy and Lanny, moved into the house at 1772 S.E. Jackson St. in 1999, said Sandy Rice in a phone interview. The couple now live in Port Orford.

While living in a historic home they had restored on Mosher Street, Rice went to a garage sale at the Parrott house and found it was for sale.

She called the real estate agent. Soon the couple were living in the home, then still pink “inside and out,” she recalled with a laugh.

Over the next six years, the couple restored the home, keeping it as close to its original state as possible. They ripped down pink-hued wallpaper and replaced it with Victorian-looking wallpaper. They removed overly painted floors with hardwood floors reminiscent of the 1890s.

“We worked extra hard on doing the yard,” Rice said. Tall firs and cedars once lined the front driveway; now two torn-up stumps remain. Gardens and green grass covered the upper yard, now a swath of dead, brown grass.

Former owners of an antique store, the couple also filled the house with antiques.

Randy Rice, who never lived in the house, remembers coming to visit his parents there. “Every time I'd come over here, I was fascinated with different things (my father had) done, different things I'd seen.”

Rice also remembers rumors of how the house was haunted. His parents “always poo-pooed it and laughed,” he said. His parents and his niece lived there for six years, and “they were fine.”

Eventually, his parents put the house up for sale, deciding to make good on their dream to move back to Port Orford, where they had been married.

In 2006, Brown and his then-wife, Anna, bought the house for $364,000. They told the Rices they planned to preserve the historic home, Sandy Rice said.

The Rices carried 20 percent of the home loan for the Browns, she said. Countrywide Home Loans Inc. carried the other 80 percent of the loan, she said.

Stopped making payments

Sometime after the Browns bought the home, Jeffery Brown repainted the walls in warm Tuscan colors — rust-red, mustard-yellow, sage green. And he appears to have updated the electrical wiring.

But things also started disappearing — an original mantelpiece, the historic light fixtures, kitchen counters, the furnace, a downstairs toilet, as well as many of the trees that once graced the 2.36 acres on which the home sits.

“We're not trying to slander people in any way,” Randy Rice adds. “We didn't see him take it out. It's all hearsay. We just know it's not here.”

About December of 2008, the Rices stopped receiving loan payments from the Browns. Sandy Rice said she called Jeffery Brown. Early this year, he told her he was going bankrupt and the Rices would be receiving court papers saying so, she said.

Brown filed for bankruptcy on April 29. Although the Rices are listed as one of Brown's creditors on court documents, they say they've never gotten any written notice of the bankruptcy.

“That's over $75,000 we'll probably never get,” said Rice, of what Brown still owes the couple.

Whether the home has been foreclosed on couldn't be verified by deadline.

Can it be preserved?

In early July, Lois Thomas, a longtime Douglas County Historical Society board member, said she and the Rices talked about the fire hazard the home might face from Fourth of July revelers.

Her family agreed to mow the large yard to lessen the fire worries. And she saw firsthand the state of the historic home.

“We were really disturbed,” she recalled. “We feel it is probably a premiere landmark in Roseburg. I'm sure everybody that lives in Roseburg has seen it.

“We didn't want to lose it,” Thomas added. “The historical society was particularly perturbed.”

Then about a month ago, vandals broke out a window in the turret, from the inside, as well as a first-floor window, Randy Rice said.

When a brick shattered the front-door window last Sunday, he called the police. Police arrived “in two minutes,” he said. Now informed of the vandalism problems, police have said they'll patrol the area more, Rice said.

That's the least Rice hopes for. “I just want (people) to be aware of what's happening to it. If you look and see anyone, kids, whatever, call the police,” he said.

“I don't want the house destroyed. If we can't get the community's eyes and ears on it, it's going to be gone.”

“I don't know what to do,” Rice continued. “It would be great if a family could live there. I don't know if that's feasible. Maybe somebody could come and buy the house and give it to the historical society.”

“We'd love to see it preserved, of course,” said Thomas, although the historical society doesn't have the money to buy it. “We feel it's an important landmark for the city of Roseburg.”

From the years she lived there, Sandy Rice said she's started feeling like the house has feelings for her and her husband, that it's glad to see the couple when they return now and then.

But those feelings have changed, she said. “I feel like that house is crying,” Rice said. “It's like when you walk up to it, it's like, ‘please, help.'”

• You can reach reporter Kathy Korengel at 957-4218 or by e-mail at kkorengel@nrtoday.com.