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Letter to the editor

A sea of tragedy, pain

Marsha Day's husband died Oct. 14. Her home burned days later. She and her son must start over.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS, Times Staff Writer
Published November 23, 2007

BALLAST POINT - Keith Day always spent hours dozing in his favorite chair. It hurt too much to stand. The 41-year-old diabetic had circulation problems and nerve damage in his legs.

So when Marsha Day came home with a friend on Oct. 14, her son told her, "Dad's sleeping in his chair."

How was Anthony to know? Marsha tried to wake him up. He wasn't breathing. Her friend laid him on the floor and tried CPR. Marsha noticed 16-year-old Anthony, who is mentally challenged, standing there watching. She told him to go to his room.

The police are waiting for test results from the medical examiner, but the family assumes it was one of Keith's many health problems. The paramedics said he had been dead for hours.

"I could've saved him," Anthony told his mom. "I could've woke him up."

Five days later, Marsha awoke just before 4 a.m. Her hair was on fire.

It had started in the air conditioning unit, then licked up the walls. Because the windows were open, as soon as Marsha cracked her bedroom door, the fire draft whooshed into the kitchen and up to the attic.

Marsha and Anthony escaped, along with two friends who had spent the night reviewing home videos for Keith's memorial. Of their nine cats, four survived.

By the time Marsha made it out, the house was engulfed. She watched her cat Spike run out in a ball of flames.

The burns were so bad, she had to put Spike down. Almost everything was destroyed, including the home videos.

Anthony still says he could've saved the cats.

- - -

Anthony and his mom now live at his grandmother's. Friends gave them clothing and took in the surviving cats. They can stay as long as they want, until Marsha's father, who owned the house, gets insurance money to rebuild it.

They often visit the charred shell of their old home, to sift through the debris. The bikes are half-melted. Keith's cane is still in the bedroom where he left it.

Marsha, who is now 34, grew up in that house. Keith grew up a few blocks away, in his parents' house. They met at Ballast Point, when Marsha skipped her junior high prom to go fishing. He and his friends teased her for wearing a pink dress to the pier. When she got cold, he gave her his jacket.

She had Anthony in 1991, and they married in her childhood home not long after. Keith, never one to dress up, wore his Metallica T-shirt and shorts.

He was a big guy, with long hair and a moustache. He was a cook at the Colonnade who would go fishing at 3 a.m. and jump fences to find the perfect fishing spot.

Anthony grew up to be a big kid, and wears a moustache, like his dad. He gets straight A's in his special education classes at Robinson High School.

Two things inspire him: animals and video games.

His parents accumulated animals. If a cat abandoned her kittens, friends would give them to Marsha.

Keith drove through Church's Chicken with a red-tail boa constrictor around his shoulders.

Anthony is shy about affection, but he never held back from petting the cats as they crawled all over him.

He writes stories about his favorite video game characters and makes models out of them with plaster.

They spark his imagination, grandmother Lavinia Stembridge says.

Video game language helps Anthony communicate.

Like when his father died, he said he felt a sword in his heart.

- - -

Mourners gathered under a shelter at Ballast Point on Sunday morning, facing a podium cloaked in fishing net and bait hooks.

An easel held four decades of photos. Keith's rod leaned against it.

A man with a beard and spectacles stood at the podium, Keith's stepfather Jimmie Stembridge. "This was Keith's place," he said. "He probably fished every inch of this bank, every foot of that pier. It was his place, his refuge, his haven."

Later that day, immediate family members would take a boat into the bay and scatter Keith's ashes. Stembridge brought the memorial service to a close.

"Each one of you, take a rose," he said. "Go anywhere you want on this pier, on this bank. Have a silent moment with Keith, and pass that rose onto the bay."

Marsha stood, tissue in her hand, and hugged a friend. Others surrounded Keith's mother.

Lunch was cooking, barbecued chicken. Pink Floyd played on a radio, Wish You Were Here.

Anthony picked a white rose and left the crowd behind.

He walked past the kids squealing on the playground, to the end of a small, empty pier.

He put his left hand in his pocket as he held the rose over the bay and let go.

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at azayas@sptimes.com or 226-3354.

About Holiday Hopes

Holiday Hopes is an occasional series profiling people in need and their wishes this holiday season. City Times will update readers if and when wishes are granted.

Their wishes

Anthony's friends already replaced his video games. For Christmas, he wants to be active and stay healthy. He'd like a bicycle on which he can balance, one with three wheels.

Marsha Day never got a degree. She has worked in fast-food restaurants. She wants training that could land her a more stable job, maybe working with animals. She also needs transportation.

To give, contact grandmother Lavinia Stembridge at 813-839-8838.

[Last modified November 23, 2007, 10:02:44]