Omaha couple brought a taste of Afghanistan to their home near Elmwood Park

It wasn’t just the proximity to the University of Nebraska at Omaha that sold Tom and Marylu Gouttierre on their English Tudor house in the Elmwood Park neighborhood.

It was the space for the 50 rugs they’d brought back from Afghanistan, where they had spent 10 wonderful and adventurous years. The house’s arches reminded them of their second home overseas, too.

“Each rug was from a special village, and I remember the villages,” Marylu said.

The ranch house she’d been considering on Dillon Drive wouldn’t do. It was going to take a big house with lots of floors to display her collection. They pulled up the carpet and stripped the floors to accommodate them.

They also needed a place to entertain. They moved to Omaha in 1974 when Tom became the dean of international studies and programs at UNO and he would often bring home guests. Marylu worked, too, at Nebraska Furniture Mart selling rugs.

“I would have 20, 30, 40 people for dinner. I knew some of the guests but not all of them,” Marylu said.

Oftentimes, it was people they met while both were in the Peace Corps or through the Fulbright Scholarship program that Tom was part of in Afghanistan would stay with them.

That prompted the gutting of the basement. They now have an apartment there and it’s called the lower level. The third floor can also accommodate guests.

“We’ve had hundreds maybe thousands of people stay with us,” Marylu said. “A lot of Afghans coming through. We’d get calls from old students saying ‘I’m in America, can I stay with you?’”

There’s a lot they appreciate about the house. That’s what kept them there when they thought about moving into a condo after they both retired in their 70s in 2015.

They had put down a deposit before their three sons tried to change their minds, asking them to list the pros and cons of a move.

It took just a walk through each of the rooms for Marylu to change her mind.

“There are too many memories in this house. I just can’t do it,” she remembers thinking. “I told Tom and he said, ‘I feel the same way.’”

The Gouttierres say it’s a rare house, inside and out.

The outside is covered with irregular and now-rare clinker bricks. It’s one of just a few houses with the brick exterior in Nebraska.

“People marvel at the clinker bricks,” Marylu said. “It looks like a mountain you could climb.”

Inside at the back of the house is the solarium, where the couple spends a lot of time. The light coming in supports the many plants that Marylu collects.

It’s impossible to feel stress there, she says.

On the second floor above sits the main suite, where they added a deck, taking advantage of the flat roof of the solarium. The stairs from the bedroom to the outside double as drawers.

They watch the fireworks at Memorial Park there.

“At night time when you look at the sky, you are up so high you feel like you could touch the stars,” Marylu said.

At one time, the house had just one bathroom. After their sons left, and the couple had paid off the mortgage, they added several more. Marylu said almost every room in the house has been remodeled in some way, many with updates thought of by Tom.

Oldenhuis Contracting did the interior work and Stein Construction the outside.

This summer, they’ll be celebrating the house’s 100th anniversary with several others on the block, a milestone they didn’t expect to see.

When they bought the home, they thought they’d just be there a few years. They’re glad they decided to stay.

“We love this house. We love the neighborhood and we love the community we’re in,” Marylu said. “So, it’s all worked out. It’s just perfect.”