Help Our Dad Rebuild After Almeda Fire
Donation protected
On Tuesday September 8th, my dad’s home and entire neighborhood were burned to the ground in the now infamous Almeda Fire still raging through Jackson County. As an essential worker already at great risk during Covid, he was on a truck route 5 hours away when the evacuation news came in. People had only minutes to collect all they could carry and flee the scene of the rapidly encroaching flames.
He didn’t even get that chance.
The house was leveled with every single thing he owned inside, including Keeke, his beloved cat.
My father is a curator by nature. The loss of the house itself is extreme enough, but this house wasn’t just a house. It was a museum. A collection of objects, art pieces and memorabilia he’d spent a lifetime searching out and making sense of. He had a story for every one of them. They were pieces of him, evidence of his unique gift for finding treasure in places others wouldn’t even think to look.
Throughout the years this house was a living record of his history, and our family’s. A meeting place. A place to land when the world wasn’t kind. My daughter and I spent some of her first years of life calling it home. It was the place I first heard I would be a published author. The place I stumbled through early drafts of my stories and dreamed of more for them.
But most of all, it was an extension of my dad, and that’s why we loved it.
This loss is impossible to quantify or measure, but the world doesn’t pause for us to grieve. There are financial realities to face, and like he has done for us so many times throughout our lives, we want to support him through this impossible period of grief and loss.
Your donations will be used for immediate expenses and the long term goal of helping replace the things insurance doesn’t value or can’t cover, and each one of them will be so dearly appreciated by our entire family.
Thank you for hearing our story, and for your support. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.
He didn’t even get that chance.
The house was leveled with every single thing he owned inside, including Keeke, his beloved cat.
My father is a curator by nature. The loss of the house itself is extreme enough, but this house wasn’t just a house. It was a museum. A collection of objects, art pieces and memorabilia he’d spent a lifetime searching out and making sense of. He had a story for every one of them. They were pieces of him, evidence of his unique gift for finding treasure in places others wouldn’t even think to look.
Throughout the years this house was a living record of his history, and our family’s. A meeting place. A place to land when the world wasn’t kind. My daughter and I spent some of her first years of life calling it home. It was the place I first heard I would be a published author. The place I stumbled through early drafts of my stories and dreamed of more for them.
But most of all, it was an extension of my dad, and that’s why we loved it.
This loss is impossible to quantify or measure, but the world doesn’t pause for us to grieve. There are financial realities to face, and like he has done for us so many times throughout our lives, we want to support him through this impossible period of grief and loss.
Your donations will be used for immediate expenses and the long term goal of helping replace the things insurance doesn’t value or can’t cover, and each one of them will be so dearly appreciated by our entire family.
Thank you for hearing our story, and for your support. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.
Organizer and beneficiary
Tehlor Kay Mejia
Organizer
Ashland, OR
Bill Beebe
Beneficiary
