Lance Martin Herald Senior Staff Writer

TODD WETHERINGTON | DAILY HERALD Holding her youngest son Josh and a scorched Bible that barely survived the May 4 fire that gutted her home, Wendy Pittman laughs as she discusses her future plans and family life. Advertisement

ROANOKE RAPIDS - A Bible, its edges singed but its pages legible, lay on the kitchen table, one of the few remnants of a May 4 fire that gutted the inside of a house on Vance Street.

Seeing the Bible was all Wendy Pittman needed. Instead of despair over her situation, she saw it as affirmation her dream of completing her college degree and becoming a teacher would not be lost to the rebuilding process she was faced with.

“That's my sign everything was going to be OK,” she said Thursday.

With a defective smoke alarm in her house at 902 Vance St., Pittman's salvation and the salvation of her three boys and fiancé was that she had set her alarm for 5 a.m. because of a trip with the class she was observing as part of her degree requirements.

“When I woke up it sounded like microwave popcorn. When I went in the kitchen there was fire on the wall,” she said.

The popcorn sound was electrical lines arcing and amid the pops and sizzles, smoke and flames, Pittman threw her 7-year-old's clothes in a basket, grabbed her pocketbook from the kitchen table and three discs which had her school work on them.

Her fiancé, Steve Barnes, made a mad dash through the house to find the family's three kittens after making sure the boys were out of the house. On his third time through the house, he got stuck in the laundry room and had to dive through a window to safety.

But Barnes' troubles didn't end there; he was charged by police for resisting as he attempted to get back in the house to save the cats.

In the end, the mother cat and one of the babies was saved, but the family lost a Lab puppy in the process.

The fire was caused by a faulty oven that made it appear the oven was off when it actually was on low heat. Wendy made the boys a quick and easy dinner of bacon and eggs that evening. There was also a pot of grease on the stove from when Wendy made herself a fish sandwich for lunch.

That combination led to a fire which gutted the house she and Barnes worked hard to refurbish over the last three years.

Wendy was lucky that her parents, Clara and Elvin Mizell, live next door, but she was unlucky about some of the things that were lost in the blaze.

“It's hard,” she said. “When you sit there and you think about the stuff the children made in school and having to throw it out because it can't be saved, stuff your 14-year-old made when he was 7.”

And then there are the sacrifices Wendy and Barnes have made to turn the house into a home. which included new floors, sheetrock and bathrooms, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000.

She worked at Kmart for 16 years before it closed. When that happened, she knew it was time for improvement. She is currently working at Maxway, where employees have pitched in to help her.

But with the problems come solutions. Wendy has filed an application with Habitat for Humanity to have a new house built and is willing to put funds she received from the community and savings toward that.

Her parents are letting her and the children stay with them. “I thank God for my mom and dad. “If it wasn't for them we'd be in trouble,” she sid.

Graduation for Wendy is next year and she already has her mind set on getting a job teaching first grade. Weighing that against the fire, she said, “I can't let that destroy me.”