The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 61

jpQ I i Li STAFF COLUMNIST Small town's loss lingers like smoke after a fire Pa MAGNET, Ind. You cannot begin to measure the loss of Raymond and Mary Jean Cas-sidy, and the general store they owned for 42 years, unless you stand in the place where they lived and died. HILL SEAFOOD ENCHILADA MONTEREY $995 We smother scrumptious seafood with a creamy sherry sauce, roll it up in i warm flour tortilla, and -top it all off with shrimp and more sherry sauce. uouimm TROUT (8oz. Only mesquite grilling can impart such a delightful flavor on boneless fillets of fresh Mountain without masking the delicate taste.

and a few years ago family antiques from her mother's Meade County house. Raymond became a Title I Coordinator for the Perry County School a member of the Knights of Columbus Council 1170 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2939. He helped keep their store in groceries, hardware and fuel oil, spending time at the race tracks when he could. Together they raised three children, became part-time owners of a tavern and restaurant across the road from their store. After 42 years Raymond and Mary Jean Cassidy were Magnet, suppliers of its needs, the keepers of its comings and goings, the center of its heart.

ABOUT 4 A.M. on Feb. 26, Leonard Cassidy, a nephew, heard Mary Jean Cassidy shouting for help. Leonard, who lives across the road, looked outside and saw the store and house, only about 20 feet apart, dissolving in thick gray smoke and raging orange flames. The heat was so intense it melted the siding on Leonard Cassidy's house, peeled the paint off his car.

There was no one else around and no way Leonard could help. The bodies of Mary Jean and Raymond were recovered from the ruins of their home that afternoon. Because the family dog was found outside and the keys were found inside Mary Jean's car, family and neighbors believe Mary Jean got out but went back inside to help Raymond. She was 66, Raymond was 81. The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Family, friends and neighbors lined up for hours to pay their final respects at the Huber Funeral Home in Tell City. The couple were buried in St. Augustine Cemetery. Last Thursday morning the charred ashes of their home and store clung to the hill above the Ohio River, a blackened chimney reaching into the sky. Above it, on the river's bluff, a woodpecker hammered noisily at a tree, its staccato beat echoing across the flat, brown water.

Bob Hill's column appears in SCENE each Saturday and in the Tuesday and Thursday Metro sections of The Courier-Journal. Call him at (502) 582-4646. GRILLED TOIJA (Soz.) Tender 6 juicy, with the rich, distinctive flavor only! mcsquite grilling can impart. Their store, and nearby home, were almost 100 years old. Both were built on a hill safely above the Ohio River in a community once named Rono, then renamed Magnet, apparently because people were so attracted to it.

Even then only three or four houses were built on the hill, the rest scattered on nearby farms and Perry County ridges. The Cassidy home was big, two bedrooms downstairs and four bedrooms up, the latter long ago rented to salesmen, who entered through an outside stairs. The house's double porch fronted the main road and wrapped along one side, offering a view of the flat Meade County farmlands across the river in Kentucky. One of the eternal summer sights in Magnet was Mary Jean Cassidy sweeping her porch, inviting people up to sit and talk. CASSIDY'S GENERAL STORE had wooden counters and once sold beans and rice from pull-out bins, ladies' shoes and rows of laces, spools of thread and blocks of cheese.

A tanner worked upstairs, the smell of leather filling the building. The store was owned by William Cassidy, then Willard Cassidy, then Durward Cassidy, then Raymond Cassidy, who grew up in Perry County, served in World War II, was awarded a Purple Heart. He married Mary Jean Mattingly, a Meade County native, in 1956. He was 39, she 24. They bought Cassidy's General Store in 1957.

She would say she loved Raymond but wasn't so sure about his store. She never left either one. Mary Jean Cassidy became the town postmistress, its social secretary, the organist at St. Augustine Catholic Church in nearly. Leopold.

If something needed doing, it was Mary Jean who did it. She filled the store with warmth, energy TUMBLEWEELT If SoutWest Mesquite Bar 12 Art Locations Since 1975 Rita Mae Brown discussion and signing Cat on the Scmt rj Wednesday, March 10 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Gardiner Lane Here comes the 7th novel in her popular "Mrs. Murphy" i mystery series.

Her autobiography Rita Will EDITOR: MAUREEN McNERNEY PHONE: 582-4667 FAX: 582-4665 y-v What's it like to be a AFTER DARK Korean oasis 7 111 Nielsen family? Dianne ANN LANDERS Sharing the load 16 III Apnle writes her JLV confessions of a TV diarist. THE BEST Four-legged friend 6 BRIDGE By Sheinwold and Stewart 18 6 Love to have a dog but ON THE SCREEN A guide to the movies in town. 12 allergies are a problem? The ON THE TUBE A familiar story 15 SSS.WS6.,niBWbe,h8 THE SATURDAY FUNNIES All of them 16 SATURDAY TV LISTINGS Today's programs 8 TOMORROW IN ARTS LEISURE: TUNE IN Brother act 4 Girls rule in recent movies about high school. But these characters are hardly the girl-next-door type. Cover photo by Pam Spanieling.

The Courier-Journal new in paperback. TV7 a 1 O'vi ML Saturday, March 6, 1999 SCENE Page 3.