It’s been five months since the Garner family of Glendale lost everything they own to a house fire. Five months since an explosion in their kitchen nearly took their lives, melted beloved pictures to the walls, and charred books and family art and antiques beyond recognition.
Mom Barbara still has difficulty discussing the fire, and she hasn’t done so publicly until this point. But she agreed to after I asked her to share with our readers some of the grace, strength and eloquence that are so evident amid the sadness with which she recalls what she and her family have lost.
It is no coincidence that the family’s thank you to the community in Congregation Shalom’s June bulletin appeared beneath a notice of the successful conclusion of a two-month book drive for Sam’s Hope, the literacy project son Sam began for his bar mitzvah project in 1998 and that is now a full-time foundation.
For in the very same week that the Garners lost everything and found themselves on the receiving end for the first time in their lives, they continued to give. “We put on our borrowed clothes,” Barbara recalled, “and held a ‘Snuggle Up and Read’ program that was scheduled with Milwaukee Bucks player Mark Pope for 150-200 inner-city children.”
And they’ve continued the work of Sam’s Hope, which has grown to encompass partnerships with Borders Books and Marcus Theatres, among others, even as they have struggled to rebuild their home and lives.
“I remember telling our kids the week of the fire,” Barbara said, “that ‘I understand that you’ve lost a lot. But the kids we help through Sam’s Hope will never even have what we’ve lost.’”
Not that she hasn’t been protective of her children (Sarah, 13, Sam, 15, and Josh, 20 this week) and husband Peter. Barbara asked her synagogue not to publish anything about the fire for months; and she has rejected many contacts from the media, who know the family through their literacy foundation.
But while she has been careful to nurture her children, she has also made sure that they’ve been aware of what she described as “the immediate and intense outpouring from the community in general, and especially from the Jewish community.”
“The community knew exactly what to do,” Barbara said, “and they were right there the next day. We got a truckload of stuff from the synagogue, and continue to be on the receiving end to this day.”
“It’s hard to think of all the people we have to thank,” she said, but the family is particularly grateful to Rabbis Ron Shapiro and Shari Heinrich and administrator Marc Cohen. “Marc organized the help and was phenomenal in what he was able to do and the way he did it during a highly emotional time for us.”
“We had to learn after all these years of giving, that there is another side to life, and our children had to learn that in a way we didn’t want them to,” she said. “We talk about the life the people we help through our work live — as a family at dinner and when we do a literacy event or program — but it is different talking about hardship and then going through something like this.”
Deepened ties
But if the fire and the community’s generosity gave the Garner family what Barbara called a life lesson in a way she would have preferred to avoid, it also gave them something else — a deepening of their already close ties to Judaism.
From the first night of the fire, when Barbara and Peter went back into the house to retrieve something from each child’s room, they searched for “their Jewish things.” That first night, they found Josh’s Kiddish cup on his shelf, unmelted.
“The interesting thing about seeing your stuff devastated,” Barbara mused, “is seeing what remains.”
A day after the fire, during one of their many attempts to salvage their possessions, the family found two books that mean more to them than any others in what was an extensive collection. The first, their Bible, was sitting undamaged on a hallway desk atop many other books that had been ruined; the second, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” had helped Barbara cope with the illnesses of her parents.
“Each time we went back in, we took something else from the rubble. Our talleism, our Kiddish cups, our menorahs, anything that hadn’t melted,” Barbara recalled. But they left the mezzuzas on the doors, “because we had to keep going back in. Peter took them down only after we were done going through everything.”
“We’re not sure we can use the talleisim again,” Barbara added wistfully, including one that had belonged to the children’s grandfather. Amid her grief over the potential loss of their own, she was moved to tears by her son Sam’s instinctive reach for a tallit during his recent confirmation.”
“I always feel something when I go into synagogue,” she said. “But ever since the fire, I feel even more and I find myself sitting there with tears in my eyes.”
Slowly, the family’s life is returning to normal, and they hope to return to their home in August. Still, Barbara admits “that every day is a new adventure.”
“You don’t get through anything like this as a family unless the family is strong before,” she concluded. “We’ve pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and are taking care of everyone.”
Although she was talking about her immediate family, one knows that with Barbara and her family, they’re also taking care of a whole lot more.
(In the past two years, Sam’s Hope has provided 6,000 books to Milwaukee area children to take home and own. The foundation also helps teens become literacy tutors and recipient agencies to create play programs to promote literacy, and helps build mini-libraries throughout America’s diverse neighborhoods. For more information on Sam’s Hope, visit www.samshope.org.)
Loading ...