The Pueblo Chieftain has published an article about the Herrons and their post-fire challenges, and I will "paste" it below.
Meanwhile, the Cheryl and Ron Herron Fire Fund continues to grow. For everyone who has already made a deposit - THANK YOU! The Central Wildcat family is strong and supportive of its own.
To make a deposit to help Cheryl and Ron, go to any Wells Fargo branch office. The name of the account is the Cheryl and Ron Herron Fire Fund, Account Number 2095944688. Thank you so much for your generosity - and thank you, too, to Jan Jones Fisher and Sherry O'Brien Massorotti for establishing the fund for Cheryl and her family.
Here's the Chieftain article:
Pueblo
natives lost their home
Their
possessions are gone, but they’re thankful to have survived
WALDO
CANYON FIRE
COURTESY
PHOTO/RON AND CHERYL HERRON
The
Herrons’ home after the Waldo Canyon Fire.
By
LORETTA SWORD
THE
PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
____________________________________________________
Losing everything forces people to redefine the word “priceless” and learn again the meaning of gratitude.
At least that’s what Ron and Cheryl Herron have discovered since losing their Mountain Shadows home to the Waldo Canyon Fire that left them and 345 other Colorado Springs families with no place to live and huge chunks of their lives reduced to ash.
The Herrons, both Pueblo natives who moved north in 1967 after graduating from South and Central high schools, were in Denver watching a granddaughter play softball when evacuation orders were issued. One of their two daughters was with them; the other had stayed behind with the family dog in the home shared by the extended family.
Cheryl Herron said she didn’t think to give her daughter instructions to save anything but herself and the dog when she learned of the fast-moving fire.
“We told her to just get out and stay safe,” Herron said by phone Friday. “I’m so thankful that’s what she did. It came so quick it wasn’t even funny.”
And now everything is gone.
Family furniture and china.
Hand-written holiday cards from children and grandchildren. Photos of those same loved ones, smiling for the camera in happier times.
“That’s the hardest part — losing pictures, and family things.
Things your kids gave you, and your parents. Things that belonged to them and were a reminder. It’s all gone. But we’re safe and we’re all together, and that’s more important than anything else,” Herron said. “We’re grateful no firefighters were killed or injured, and we want to thank them for doing such a fabulous job. We talked to some of them, and they really feel they let you down when they couldn’t save your house. But they shouldn’t feel that way.
They’re heroes, and that’s all.”
The Herrons have been busy trying to replace clothing and find a home to rent. They’ve been staying with friends in Security while regrouping.
Herron said it’s been a tough process because “there are 346 families looking for a place to live.
One place we were interested in got 30 calls in one day.”
She also wonders whether some landlords are taking advantage of the situation, with asking prices ranging from a low of $1,500 up to $3,000 per month.
“Maybe that’s what the going rate is; I don’t know,” she said, adding that the home they’ve found is nothing like the one her
_________________________
husband and father built with their own hands decades ago, and it’s far from the neighborhood they’ve left behind. Where their daughters grew up. Where their grandchildren attend school.
“But it’s a house, and we’ll make it a home,” she said.
Herron is a retired floral designer and her husband is a building contractor.
Former Puebloan Jan Jones and other friends of the couple in Pueblo have set up the Ron and Cheryl Herron Fund at Wells Fargo Bank to help the family.
Anyone may contribute at any local branch.
Herron said she’s grateful for the generosity of friends and family who’ve “helped us out in so many, many ways,” and she’s been even more amazed at the kindness shown by total strangers.
“You think something like this will never happen to you,” she said. “When it does, you don’t know what to do. And I don’t know what we would have done without all the help people we’ve been given.”
Losing everything forces people to redefine the word “priceless” and learn again the meaning of gratitude.
At least that’s what Ron and Cheryl Herron have discovered since losing their Mountain Shadows home to the Waldo Canyon Fire that left them and 345 other Colorado Springs families with no place to live and huge chunks of their lives reduced to ash.
The Herrons, both Pueblo natives who moved north in 1967 after graduating from South and Central high schools, were in Denver watching a granddaughter play softball when evacuation orders were issued. One of their two daughters was with them; the other had stayed behind with the family dog in the home shared by the extended family.
Cheryl Herron said she didn’t think to give her daughter instructions to save anything but herself and the dog when she learned of the fast-moving fire.
“We told her to just get out and stay safe,” Herron said by phone Friday. “I’m so thankful that’s what she did. It came so quick it wasn’t even funny.”
And now everything is gone.
Family furniture and china.
Hand-written holiday cards from children and grandchildren. Photos of those same loved ones, smiling for the camera in happier times.
“That’s the hardest part — losing pictures, and family things.
Things your kids gave you, and your parents. Things that belonged to them and were a reminder. It’s all gone. But we’re safe and we’re all together, and that’s more important than anything else,” Herron said. “We’re grateful no firefighters were killed or injured, and we want to thank them for doing such a fabulous job. We talked to some of them, and they really feel they let you down when they couldn’t save your house. But they shouldn’t feel that way.
They’re heroes, and that’s all.”
The Herrons have been busy trying to replace clothing and find a home to rent. They’ve been staying with friends in Security while regrouping.
Herron said it’s been a tough process because “there are 346 families looking for a place to live.
One place we were interested in got 30 calls in one day.”
She also wonders whether some landlords are taking advantage of the situation, with asking prices ranging from a low of $1,500 up to $3,000 per month.
“Maybe that’s what the going rate is; I don’t know,” she said, adding that the home they’ve found is nothing like the one her
_________________________
husband and father built with their own hands decades ago, and it’s far from the neighborhood they’ve left behind. Where their daughters grew up. Where their grandchildren attend school.
“But it’s a house, and we’ll make it a home,” she said.
Herron is a retired floral designer and her husband is a building contractor.
Former Puebloan Jan Jones and other friends of the couple in Pueblo have set up the Ron and Cheryl Herron Fund at Wells Fargo Bank to help the family.
Anyone may contribute at any local branch.
Herron said she’s grateful for the generosity of friends and family who’ve “helped us out in so many, many ways,” and she’s been even more amazed at the kindness shown by total strangers.
“You think something like this will never happen to you,” she said. “When it does, you don’t know what to do. And I don’t know what we would have done without all the help people we’ve been given.”
Cheryl & Ron
Herron Fire Fund. Wells Fargo Bank account number 2095944688.
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