Engulfing blaze burns up family home
A teenage sleepover for the daughter of head volleyball coach Kathy Allen didn’t quite go as planned, as everyone was woken up early the following morning by smoke alarms while the gray stuff started filling up the entire home in Lawrence on May 1 last year.
“All of us were sound asleep, and the smoke alarms went off,” Allen said. ” … The dirt was kind of filtering out the smell, so we never noticed it.”
The entire garage of the new house was on fire, but that was just the far north section of the house. After Allen yelled for everyone to get out of the home, they all followed the dog outside. She ran back inside to get sweatshirts for everyone.
“We were thinking (the fire would) be out pretty quickly and be not that big of a deal,” Allen said. ” … All of a sudden, the fire got into the air-conditioning duct, and a fireball just went through the house while we were outside. It almost looked like it was exploding. … This was within 10 minutes of when we got out.”
Allen said she was thankful everyone got out of the eight-month-old house when they did.
“We saw both upper bedrooms, where all the kids were sleeping, collapse, so obviously I have a lot to be thankful for,” she said.
Allen also said the fire department was very methodical about how it did things, making the recovery process very efficient. The firefighters took everything that was salvageable and placed large tarps over the items.
“We didn’t lose a photo album, a picture off the wall, any little photograph, nothing like that,” Allen said. ” … I’m thankful that the fire department preserved our family history.”
Allen said she wrote the department a letter thanking it for its careful handling of her non-replaceable photographs and other items.
Allen said she was also thankful for the support of her friends during the time her house was engulfed in flames.
“Within half an hour to 45 minutes after we got outside, … here comes the athletic director and his wife, who drove up from Baldwin and had heard my house was on fire,” Allen said. “I’m very thankful to look up in the midst of a tragedy and see my boss and his wife just being there to support me during this time.”
Allen said she was also very thankful for smoke alarms and said they save the lives of a lot of people. She said she was most thankful her children and granddaughter made it out safely.
“Mostly, I’m thankful that my children and my family and her friends were not hurt,” Allen said. “The house was replaceable.”
It took seven months to rebuild the parts of the house that were lost in the fire. The Allen family still lives in the same house.
Cancer almost takes life at age 5
An ordinary day at church turned out to be a seven-month scare when 5-year-old Drew Franks ran up to his mother for a piece of gum and she noticed the lump on his neck that doctors would diagnose as Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a few weeks later.
Franks, who is now a sophomore at Baker University, said the doctors took a biopsy immediately, which brought a cancerous member to the surface. One chemo treatment did not make the growth go away, so he had to go through an extensive round of chemotherapy.
“Right before first grade, I was admitted to the hospital and spent nine days there,” Franks said. “They ran a lot of tests. I almost died.”
Franks said a tube that ran through his sternum and around his heart was inserted into his chest. His body reacted to the anesthesia poorly. All his muscles locked up, sending him into a shocked state with malignant hyperthermia. He left the hospital after his body responded again.
“When I got out of the hospital, my parents let me get a mohawk (haircut) for the first time,” Franks said. “I was 6 years old, and I got to get a mohawk.”
The haircut did not stay for long because the medicine was too strong.
“Five days later, the mohawk was gone and my eyebrows and all the rest of my hair. Chemotherapy will kill it,” Franks said.
Franks was taken to treatment twice every month from June 1993 through January 1994.
“What I can remember was it was seven months of hell,” Franks said. “Some days I’d be fine, and I would get to go to school … and then the next day I’d wake up and my parents would say, ‘We’re going to get your blood taken at the hospital.'”
Some of Franks’ grade school friends stuck with him and understood his condition, but others did not understand why he received special care and was different.
“When I went to school on the playground, almost everywhere I went I was teased by somebody because I was the kid getting all the attention,” Franks said.
He said he remembers those people who stuck by his side.
“I say thank you still to this day because it meant so much,” he said.
Franks was officially declared in remission in March 1994.
“I do remember very vividly the day we went in January and the doctor said I was done,” he said. “It definitely wasn’t an overly emotional moment, because you don’t have a lot of emotions yet, but I just remember being really excited because I didn’t have to do chemo anymore. I just started jumping up-and-down, up-and-down.”
Franks said he is thankful to be alive today.
“I’m just thankful every morning when I wake up that that battle is over,” Franks said. “… Looking back now, I don’t know how I did it, but I really don’t care, because I survived, and that’s all that matters.”
Air national guard takes student overseas
unior Nikki Hastings, member of the Air National Guard, had no idea what she would be doing when she volunteered to go overseas to Qatar until two days before she arrived.
Hastings said almost two years ago her unit found out an overseas trip was possible. Last winter she volunteered to go over for her country.
“I volunteered in February to my officer in charge,” Hastings said.
The volunteer unit went to Qatar, a country south of Iraq. Hastings said with her training she could do anything from being a cook to working in the fitness department. She said this was because of her basic training and schooling at a technological institute.
“I went to basic training and tech school. Basic training was a really emotional time for me because it was the first time I was away from my family,” Hastings said. “It also made me grow because I was away from my comfort zone, and it made me more comfortable with myself.”
Hastings said it prepared her for her volunteer work in Qatar, which involved working in the flight kitchen that was open 24 hours. She helped plan meals and prepare food for the troops for two months last year.
“Just seeing the people coming in and how distressed they looked made me proud I was helping out and made me more comfortable I wasn’t out there,” she said.
Hastings said the base she was stationed at was a transition point between fighting grounds and was not technically a war zone.
She said she still stays in contact with her entire unit from Forbes Field in Fort Riley that made the trek over to Qatar.
“One of them is my best friend because of everything that went on over there,” Hastings said.
As a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, Hastings said initiation was right around the time she left. She said she is very thankful for the support of her sisters in her house and that her family was great. In addition, the experience made her thankful for the possessions she has here in America that she did not have overseas.
“The day before I left for Qatar, I was initiated into Zeta,” Hastings said. “I received letters when I got there, and my family was so supportive. It made me so thankful for the things I have on a daily basis, like my computer, or you can go out and eat whenever you want on a daily basis, and I also feel more thankful that I live in the United States as a woman because I have so many rights that other women in other countries don’t have. … I want those women to have more rights and the (Middle East) to be more humane.”