Following accidentally stumbling upon the records of Helen Bender (aged 3), and Richard Bender (4) just after the 71st anniversary of the house fire that took their lives, I called their oldest and only surviving brother, Jack, at his home in Arkansas. I told him that I’d found the information on the fire and that it was reported in newspapers on the opposite side of the state.
Then I got to the big question I had for him this time, why was his mother absent at the time of the fire? Shocked, he asked where I gotten that from, and I told him that it was included in the newspapers. He explained to me what happened that day. Jack was around twelve years old at the time, he said that Helen and Richard were sleeping in a bedroom – part of a new addition being put on the house to better accommodate the family of seven. Jack, who was twelve that year was helping his father’s uncle Clemons Fast work on the addition while his mother Elizabeth looked on. My grandfather and his brother Harold were at the neighbor’s house.
The homes electric had been shut off while they were doing structural work, and a line was being ran from the neighbor’s to provide the Bender’s with electric. Fast had a pot of tar heating on the stove in the kitchen – just outside the door where little Richard and Helen were asleep. The tar, being unattended, got too hot and started the fire. By the time the family outside had noticed, the whole kitchen and bedroom were aflame. There was no way to save the children. They died on November 6th, 1942 and were laid to rest in nearby cemetery Cadillac Memorial Gardens West on November 9th, 1942.
Just when I thought the chapter on my father’s late aunt and uncle would soon be closed, a Find a Grave member named Nancy sent me an email telling me of how she scoured Cadillac Memorial Gardens – West for the graves of the brother and sister to no avail. She didn’t stop there though! She asked the office if they were in fact buried in the singles section – to which she was given a definite “yes” and two groundskeepers later came to help, sadly the search was in vain. I called the cemetery next day and was informed by an employee named Rich that the Bender children were never given headstones.
Resurrecting Memories 