Fire in Montecito

I've been watching the news from Montecito and Westmont College with sadness.

I started at Westmont in September of 1977, about 3 weeks after a terrible fire. The first weekend I was in town students went out to help dig out houses that were totally lost. Shoveling a family's posessions that were now nothing but ash.

You know how sometimes a page burns, but if it hasn't been crumbled, you can still read the ink on the sheet of ash? I remember picking up a sheet of ash that had been printed music. I could still see the staff and the notes. Then I tapped it and it dissolved into powder. Being a musician myself I felt a moment of the family's loss.

We all know underneath the veneer that "you can't take it with you", but loss through fire strikes something primal.

All of the dorm buildings that were lost, to my knowledge, were in the Clark complex, including Clark S. I roomed in Clark R - a few feet from the destroyed building.

My heart aches for the campus, faculty, staff and students. And I am praying for my friend Don Johnson and his congregation at Montecito Covenant Church just down the hill. Church members lost 10 homes.