By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-14 22:06:11 | Updated at 2025-01-15 05:13:07
7 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // After the Eaton Fire reduced their three-decade Altadena home to ashes, the Halpin family returned to find a poignant reminder of hope: a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, standing intact amid the devastation.
Gathering with friends around the statue, the family sang a moving rendition of Regina Caeli to the Blessed Virgin.
The moment, captured on video, has quickly gained traction online as a moving testament to faith and resilience in the face of loss.
One #Altadena home was lost in the #EatonFire, leaving behind an intact statue of Our Blessed Mother.
Their family home was "a center of hospitality, joy, support, and familiar love for a wide and deep circle of loved ones over those three decades."https://t.co/pJYkVeEjba
Jackie Halpin, reflecting on the devastation, shared a heartfelt account of the memories and treasures lost in the fire:
“Well this is it,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Our sweet little house is gone. Where we raised 6 children and hosted so many lovely Christmas and Easter parties, baby and wedding showers, graduation parties, and Thanksgiving celebrations. We felt so strongly in the virtue of hospitality and here we practiced it.”
Jackie described some of the irreplaceable treasures lost in the fire, many of which held deep personal and family significance:
“Gone are my precious history books…The beautiful watercolor of my childhood home that my son-in-law painted…The bed my mother and her father were both born in,” she said.
“A great-grandmother’s sideboard cabinet and another great-grandmother’s antique sewing machine,” Jackie continued. “My engagement ring. My grandmother’s original set of Franciscan Apple China…The Nativity Set that my mom gifted us as a newly married couple. Years of little things that told the story of our life.”
Despite the deep sense of loss, Jackie expressed a remarkable testament of enduring faith:
“My heart is broken but we will go on — it’s just going to take a while,” she said. “I know my children and grandchildren will sustain us. And most of all our faith will hold us up. Jesus, I trust in Thee. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Peter Halpin Jr., son of Peter and Jackie Halpin, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to support his parents as they navigate “what will likely be a strained, convoluted, and lengthy” insurance process.
“Our parents bought that home over 35 years ago,” he said, “and it was a center of hospitality, joy, support, and familial love for a wide and deep circle of loved ones over those three decades. As with many others, they lost absolutely everything.”
Donations to support the Halpin family’s recovery can be made here.
