THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140468
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EXMORE LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Marie Smith's life went up in flames, gutted by a grease fire as she was doing her small part to build her community.
A quiet women, Smith doesn't pretend to be a mover or shaker. She let others write the proposal for a $3 million grant that could change the face of her neighborhood. They were the grant experts.
And someone else arranged the meeting on Monday that brought officials from Richmond and Washington to take a look at the grant strategy. They were the meeting experts.
But Smith was the fried chicken expert. When it came time to feed all those influential people, she was the one. It didn't matter that she lived in a neighborhood marred by outhouses, rotting shacks and chronic poverty.
``I thought, `Here I go, frying my little wingdings,' '' said Smith, who works as a housekeeper for local families. ``I was just so tickled that I could do something.''
She was proud to contribute to the buffet that would feed officials from the two counties on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the Farmers Home Administration, the NAACP and the Virginia Water Project. Smith didn't realize that, even as she took the plastic wrap from the plates, fire was turning her kitchen into a blackened shell.
Just before lunch was to start, a neighbor's daughter rushed into the Belle Haven office where the big meeting was to be held. Smith knew right away that something was wrong.
``She had tears in her eyes,'' Smith said Tuesday. ``She came up to me and said, `Marie, your house is on fire.' ''
Friends rushed Smith back to her home outside Exmore, where she had lived since 1959. She stood there, speechless, tearless, as she watched fire consume the house where two of her three children were born.
In her rush to pack the food in her friend's car, Smith apparently had forgotten to turn off one of the stove's gas burners. She thinks the fat in one of her chicken pans caught fire, and the blaze spread to the rest of the kitchen, then to most of the house.
Firefighter Mary Anne Fitchett said someone in the neighborhood had called 911 to report the fire. The Exmore Fire Department received the alarm at 11:42 a.m. and arrived three minutes later. By then, heavy smoke was billowing from the house and fire was curling from the eaves, Fitchett said.
The Smiths had no fire insurance. Marie's husband, Samuel, works at the Eller Tire Co. in Keller. Samuel, 60, inherited the house from his father, and the New Road neighborhood where they raised their family is filled with relatives.
On Tuesday, a stream of friends and relatives came to console Marie Smith. The house is destroyed. Curtains she made now hang in burned shreds. The TV is melted. A few family pictures were saved, but the kitchen, bedroom and porch are nothing but a pile of soggy charcoal.
Now, Smith doesn't know where she and Samuel will live. They stayed with a cousin Monday night. A daughter, Sarah Mullen, came down from Delaware to help her mother sort through the few mementoes that the fire didn't destroy. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
Marie Smith, her burned-out kitchen behind her, had just wanted to
feed the people trying to improve her neighborhood.
Graphic
HOW TO HELP
To help Marie and Samuel Smith, send gifts to:
Northampton Housing Trust
P.O. Box 814
Nassawadox, Va. 23413
Designate that the gifts are for the Smiths.
Phone: 442-4509
by CNB