'The Lehigh Valley has a big heart,' bringing early Thanksgiving to Allentown row home fire victims

Nov. 28--Cindy Hewko always hosted Thanksgiving at her 732 Fountain St. home, where she catered to her guests with ham as well as turkey, because everyone likes a choice. The small house would fill up with about 30 people but there was always enough room -- and food -- for drop-ins.

This year, a Thanksgiving dinner was served early and not from Hewko's kitchen.

She and dozens of her neighbors on the 700 block of Fountain Street in Center City Allentown lost their homes in October when a fast-moving fire forced them to flee with little more than their pajamas. In all, 10 row homes burned, displacing eight families.

Many of them reunited at Lehigh Carbon Community College in downtown Allentown on the Thursday before Thanksgiving, to share a meal and some memories, and to collect a bounty donated by the community. It was more like an early Christmas, as a host of nonprofits produced gifts for many of the children.

The neighbors filled their plates with turkey, carnitas, pasta and potato salad, then sat at long tables, filling each other in about their upended lives. The room grew noisy with the chatter of conversation and the clatter of restless children, whose spirits were high despite their reason for being there.

"It's very difficult when you start from zero," Flor Velez, president of Puerto Rican Culture Preservation, said at the dinner. "I moved here 10 years ago and it's the first time I see a lot of organizations come together for one purpose."

"The Lehigh Valley has a big heart," she said.

At the end of the Thursday event, families picked up bags of groceries to take with them.

For most, home is still in Allentown. Jessica Garcia moved with her husband and three children to a new home on the 1500 block of Tilghman Street, about seven blocks away. She said her children, aged 14, 12 and 9, are still traumatized by the sound of the fire alarms that roused them on Oct. 20. That morning they were stunned into panic, and in the past month they've had trouble sleeping.

"We're happy because we're alive," Garcia said.

Hewko now lives near Fourth and Tilghman streets with her daughter, Brittany Haney, and grandchildren. They had lived together on Fountain Street, in the home Hewko had rented for about a dozen years. Haney got married at that home in 2009.

In their new house, Haney's three children sleep with her and her husband. But the children still have bad dreams, she said. And they won't tell Haney what they are about.

On the night of the fire, families fled with the clothes on their backs and the few precious items they were able to grab as they raced out the door. Haney was grateful that her 8-year-old daughter, Nevaeh, who took most of the pictures and videos around the house, managed to save her phone.

In the home of Angela and Carmen Guzman at 720 Fountain, all was burnt but four framed family photos resting on coffee tables in corners of the living room, and turtles Otto and Sophia, still swimming in their tanks in the kitchen as though nothing had happened.

In the immediate aftermath, the displaced found refuge with family and friends or were aided by the American Red Cross, which provided vouchers for temporary lodging.

In the weeks since then, community groups organized what many called the largest collaborative response to a local disaster in recent memory.

"In these special moments, I see how people help," said Eneida Collazo, a pastor at the Iglesias de Jesuscristo church on church on Chew Street. "I see Allentown move."

The response

Hours after the fire, Luis Perez, founder and CEO of ReciproCITY -- which provides consulting services for nonprofits as well as community-based programming -- started a group message with more than 60 community leaders to organize a donation effort.

Disk jockey Victor Martinez announced on La Mega radio station that people could send food and clothing to the ReciproCITY office on the 1300 block of Hamilton Street. And within a couple days, donations filled every hallway, every office.

Two blocks away at Hamilton Business Center, Promise Neighborhoods was also collecting donations. So, the two organizations decided to join forces. The business center opened its fourth floor for the donations, and the hub soon was overflowing with food, clothes, furniture, sheets, lamps -- everything but refrigerators, which couldn't fit in the elevators.

"It turned out to be something else," Promise Neighborhoods secretary Tara Castro said. "It was just beautiful."

"It literally looked like we opened up a store overnight," Perez said.

Other organizations joined the effort, including Operation Address the Homeless, Puerto Rican Culture Preservation and the Allentown Parent Network. At least 70 volunteers sorted and separated the contributions, Castro said.

While donations piled into the hub, the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley set up a Fountain Street Fire Fund, which has collected more than $113,000. United Way President David Lewis said more than 325 individuals and organizations have contributed to the fund.

The Friday after their homes burned down, five families went to the Promise Neighborhoods headquarters for a dinner event and to pick up new clothes. Their selections were aside in cubicles while the families sorted out housing.

There were so many donations, Promise Neighborhoods opened up the remainder to homeless people in the city. Volunteers handed trash bags full of items to about 200 people who came by, Castro said.

"In a matter of four days, we collected, and in a matter of four days, we got rid of everything," she said.

By the following Monday, 13 Fountain Street families -- which included those on the other side of the street who were able to return to their homes -- each received a $2,500 check from the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, which was charged with distributing the money raised through the Fountain Street Fire Fund.

A day or two later, Juan Dipini, a member of the Allentown Parent Network who lived on the 700 block of North Fountain Street until about six years ago, thought aloud to a friend about how close to the holidays the disaster occurred.

Dipini then sought the help of five organizations: Straight A Uniforms, Puerto Rican Culture Preservation, LCCC, Unidos and Promise Neighborhoods, which each "adopted" one of the five families who attended the donation drive at the Promise Neighborhoods' hub.

Three weeks later, those families met for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner.

Where Dipini and the others once lived is now an empty lot, hay marking the spot that had held 10 houses. Two weeks ago, Dipini visited the blank site, imagining where his living room once was, envisioning himself and his son watching TV on the couch.

He thought of all the material things lost and then of the repercussions of living through a disaster, losing years of memories.

"People are quick to help," he said, "But this is like a patch. They're traumatized."

Moving forward

Dave and Pat Howells consider themselves lucky, relatively speaking.

Their home at 718 Fountain had been in Dave Howells' family for more than 80 years. It was the setting for big Christmas dinners which his great-grandmother cooked during his childhood in the 1960s. Guests knew they were in her good graces if they were served on her best china, he recalls. In 1985, he bought the house, paying off the mortgage five years later.

Homeowners' insurance will help the Howells buy a new house and new furniture on par with the upgrades they had completed in the last five years. Financially, Dave Howells said from their room at the Wyndham Hotel on Hamilton Boulevard, "we're in good shape."

But they lost pictures of themselves and their family, decades of memories in a house they had hoped to live in for the rest of their lives. And they lost a cherished family member -- a Russian Blue cat named Sophia, who has not been found.

"I was devastated for two weeks," Pat Howells said, having taken those weeks off from work at Fulton Bank in Easton. Her husband returned to work at Home Depot the Tuesday after the fire.

"What else was I going to do?" he said.

Their birthdays are within two days of each other, on Oct. 16 and 18, so they had planned to go out to dinner that Sunday night, Oct. 20.

"Happy birthday to us," Pat Howells said, ironically.

They are still looking for a new home, which they hope to find by Christmas.

The eight displaced families including the Howells will receive another round of checks from the Fountain Street Fire Fund based on their level of need.

Alan Jennings, executive director of CACLV, said each family will have received between $6,000 and $9,000 from the fund.

Meanwhile, the organizations will continue to check in on the families.

Velez, of Puerto Rican Culture Preservation, recently visited Jessica Garcia's new house and noticed the family was out of heating oil, so she arranged for a delivery.

Valley Youth House paid for an entire year of rent for one of the families, Perez, of ReciproCITY, said. He, too, plans to stay in touch with all of them.

Cindy Hewko has been going to work every day at Wally's Deli, which is where a customer connected her with the house she moved her family into.

"I'm doing much better than where I was," she said. "I'm doing what I have to do."

Next year, she wants to host Thanksgiving again.

Morning Call reporter Kayla Dwyer can be reached at 610-820-6554 or at [email protected].

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