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CV NEWS FEED // A mother of 14 whose home was damaged in the Los Angeles fires reflected on the Catholic community’s resilience and hope in the face of tragedy.
Kendra Tierney Norton, who runs the website Catholic All Year, spoke in an interview with Catholic World Report. Norton has 10 children from her first marriage. After her first husband died of metastatic melanoma in 2022, she went on to remarry and has four step-children from her second marriage.
Norton’s home survived the fire, though it was significantly damaged and she is currently living in an Airbnb with seven of her children (the rest are away at college or live on their own.) She set up the Wildfire Relief Effort to help Catholics affected by the fires.
She shared some of the stories of those affected by the fire, including three stories of single mothers.
“Sarah Ray is a widow with four young children,” she said. “She lost her husband to brain cancer in 2022, and now has lost her home in the Altadena fire. They’re looking for temporary housing and want to rebuild their home.”
Another widowed mom of four, Fatima Binns, had her home damaged in the fire. She needs money to help with repairs so she can reenter her home.
Angela Martin, a single mother of six, lost everything her family owned when her rental home burned down.
Other families in the community were affected, as well. The Slavin family’s home and car burned down, and they have also lost everything they own. The Bulgarini family lost both their home and restaurant, which was their only source of income.
Norton spoke about her own home, which she bought 10 years ago with her first husband, Jim. She said it is 105 years old and has over an acre of property, and while she and her husband were aware of the risk of wildfires, it had never been a major concern.
“It’s just that before the firefighters always kept them under control,” she said. “This year was different. We had two fires [Eaton and the Pacific Palisades] at once, raging out of control.”
She added that they never received an evacuation order. “There were no robocalls or sheriff driving a vehicle through the neighborhood telling us we should leave. We just looked out the window, saw the mountain on fire, and decided we should leave.”
She also said that she is personal friends of Halpins, the family whose post-fire video went viral. In it, they are singing the Regina Caeli amid the ashes of their former home. The only part of their home that survived the fire was their statue of the Blessed Mother.
“They are a deeply Catholic family, and they are singers,” Norton said. “They live their faith with actions, not words. Their action, when confronted with the destruction of their home, was to praise God through song. It was inspiring.”
Norton said resilience is one of their core family values.
“We try to approach hardships with a positive attitude,” she said. “We’ve been impressed with the way our children have handled it. It’s been inconvenient and disruptive, but we’ve stayed together as a family.”
