By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

When Maria Orr, of Kentwood, got the text from her daughter that Notre Dame was on fire, it brought her right back to July 2, 2012, the day she learned her church, St. Mary Magdalen, had been ravaged by a fire.

“The priest actually called me,” said Orr, who had worked nights and weekends for 10 months to create new stained-glass windows for the church. “Knowing how hard I had worked on the windows, he personally called to let me know the church was on the fire.”

Coincidentally, her daughter had texted that night, too, and she had been driving by St. Mary Magdalen and saw the flames. Orr did not see the message. By the time she got there, all that was left was an attached family life center classroom area

Caledonia resident Nancy Baum said the fire at Notre Dame “hurt her heart” and also brought back a flood of memories of the fire at St. Mary Magdalen as well.

“At the time, I was up north,” said Baum, of Caledonia, who was a secretary for the church at the time. “I got a phone call from Father at around 1:15 in the morning. As we drove back, I kept saying ‘Let it be a little fire. Let it be a little fire.’”

But once Baum got to the site, the church was engulfed in flames.

“The staff was all gathered and all you could do was watch,” she said. “It just hurts your heart. It was just devastating.”

For Ruth Bush, of Kentwood, who is the Coordinator of Christian Services at the church, by the time she got to the site, she could shed little in tears. She had spent the six-hour drive from Cleveland, Georgia, coming to terms with the loss of her church.

“A co-worker had texted me, but I ignored it because my phone was hooked to weather alerts and we were having a very hot summer that year,” Bush said. “I woke up the next morning and got ready to look at my text messages and it said ‘Church on fire,’ and then I just started to shake.”

Bush immediately used her phone to try accessing the internet, but the service was poor. She and her husband began to make the journey home.

“I know he was doing all he could to get us home safely, but there were times when I just wanted to yell at him to drive faster,” Bush said, adding that during the drive all she could do was run a mental checklist of things lost and things possibly saved.

When the Bushes got home, they went to straight to the church, but all that was left was smoldering embers.

“It was like, ‘Wow, what are we going to do?” Bush said.

There had been no injuries, and it was later determined that fireworks started the fire at St. Mary Magdalen. Earlier that year, Michigan had rolled back its restriction on fireworks.

Through insurance and donations totaling $7.7 million, St. Mary Magdalen was rebuilt, but there was never any doubt that would happen.

“At the time (of the St. Mary Magdalen fire), I remember telling media that it is very, very sad, but it was not something that could break us,” said parishioner Lusia Ortiz, of Gaines Township. “The church are the people and a great example of that was the number of people who attended East Kentwood (High School Auditorium) for Sunday mass that weekend.”

And even in the ashes, there is always hope. As with the reports that whispered of the bell towers being saved at Notre Dame, when Orr finally did arrive at St. Mary Magdalen, she could see it.

“I could see the windows and they were blackened, but I could tell right then that some could be saved,” Orr said. A few days later, Orr and the glass company she worked with, Pristine Glass, were able to get inside the former church building.

“There was a window, it was called ‘All Souls,’ and I had used the faces of family members, my mom and dad, and friends to create it,” Orr said. “The window was gone, but there were some blackened pieces on the ground. I brushed one of the pieces clean and staring back up at me was my dad.

“I still get teary-eyed thinking about it.”