Fire victims mourned
ROGERSVILLE – Family and friends laid handmade cards and stuffed animals beneath the ivory casket of Rebecca Eddy and her three daughters, as they paid their final respects during an hourlong funeral service in Greene County Wednesday afternoon. A large crowd turned out for the service for Eddy, 26, of Waynesburg, and her three daughters, Tiffany Blake, Rebecca Blake and Diamond Blake. The service was held at Rush Funeral Home, which was filled beyond capacity, with chairs placed in the hallways, stairwells and entryways.
Eddy and the young girls were killed in a fire that started around 3:30 a.m. Saturday. Fire engulfed the 1 1/2-story wood Valley Farm Drive home rented by Steve and Rebecca Eddy.
The service, which began with the song “Free Bird” by Lynryd Skynyrd, was officiated by the Rev. Ed Woods of Trinity Baptist Church, who said friends and families can remember Eddy and the three children as a “wonderful wife and mother and three wonderful children.”
“We have these memories that we can lean on today,” he said.
Shortly before the service began, Rebecca Eddy’s husband, Steve Eddy, sat slumped forward with his face in his hands, while his brother, Josh Arthur, patted him on the back. Arthur, who lost three of his children in the fire and sustained severe burns trying to help rescue the children, still wore heavy white bandages on his hand and foot, which contrasted with the black of his suit. He was released from the hospital on Monday.
Both men sat still for long periods, staring ahead at the flower-covered coffin.
“Those children didn’t pass alone, they passed as a family,” Al Loring, the girls’ uncle, said during the service.
Also killed in the blaze were three of Rebecca Eddy’s nieces and nephews: Donna Jo Arthur, 5, Josh Arthur Jr., 3, and Christopher Arthur, 2. Funeral services for the Arthur children are scheduled for 1 p.m. today at the Owen-Neely Funeral Home in Blacksville, W.Va.
Eleven people were in the house at the time of the fire, including Steve and Rebecca Eddy and the six children. Rebecca Eddy’s brother, Robert Husner, and her mother, Lucille Treat, also were inside when the fire started. Steve Eddy and Arthur were injured in the blaze.
State police are investigating what started the fire, but family members and neighbors have said that natural gas service to the home was shut off, and space heaters and a wood-burning stove were being used to heat the house.
During the service, Woods said that during tough times like these, it is best to rely on faith and to take solace that the young mother and her three brown-haired daughters were not suffering.
“God’s grace will see you through these times,” Woods said, standing at a podium near the closed casket. “God’s grace is sufficient.”
Woods also told the crowd to remember those who were not taken by the fire, including the Eddy children who were not home at the time of the blaze.
“They’re going to need us, all of us,” he said. “As adults, we’re going to have some hard times, but these little ones, they’re going to have struggles.”
So many people turned out for the service that most sat in the hallway or entryway of the funeral home, where they could neither see nor clearly hear Woods.
“This is something that will be a part of our lives for the rest of our lives,” he said.
After the service, Loring, who is married to Steve Eddy’s sister and has served as a spokesman for the family, said Rebecca Eddy was more than just brave when she went back into the flames for the children that night rather than trying to escape the burning house. Firefighters found her clutching her 2-year-old nephew, Christopher Arthur, to her chest.
“Bravery? It’s not the proper word,” he said. “To turn into a fire to save a child is not bravery, it’s valor.”
The three girls, who were born in West Virginia and have lived in Greene County for the past five years, were buried with their mother in a single casket at Fairview Cemetery.
“The girls will be buried with their mother, as it should be,” Loring said after the service. “She died with them, she’ll go to heaven with them and that’s all we could ever ask.”