Tragic story, but still very sweet..

[GritsRgreat]

Brenda Langley's daughter was murdered April 30, leaving the 65 year old grandmother 3 children to look after. Then on May 11 a storm blow over a tree that crushed her rented home, leaving her and her 3 grand kids homeless. This 65 year old lady scrubs floors in a nursing home for a living. She didn't have the money to pay for her daughter's funeral much less a new place to live.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/19/3080313/woman-raising-kids-of-murdered.html

Home donated to grandmother whose house was crushed in storm.

Brenda Langley gets new home and more as folks do what they can to help

Andrew Dys - Columnist ROCK HILL --

The wails came snaking down from the upstairs - echoing off the walls fresh with paint and hope - in three different voices of joy.

"Grandma, come look at my room!" yelled Anthony, 15.

"Grandma, my room first!" called out Timothy, 10.

"Grandma, look at my room with a big bed!" squealed little Lizzie, 8, with freckles and a smile that would not cease.

On the porch on Rock Hill's Charlotte Avenue, Brenda Langley stood listening to the grandchildren she is raising because her daughter was murdered April 30.

She stood on the porch because her own porch on Cauthen Street remains under a tree that crushed her house in a May 11 storm.

Langley, so tired, wiped away a single tear from her left eye.

And then this 65-year-old woman - a housekeeper at a nursing home, whose life for three weeks has been nothing but sorrow as she figured out how to pay to bury a daughter and then find a new place to live - did something she thought she had forgotten how to do.

She smiled.

Langley looked at her co-workers from White Oak Manor, who have helped her so much, who came to see this house that was given to Langley for the summer, for free, as a gesture of grace in such a troubled time.

"What can I say? How can I tell people how much I appreciate this?" asked Langley, of her new home and her co-workers' love. "I am so grateful."

Brad Hastings is the managing partner of Walk2Campus, a company that owns about 30 properties near Winthrop University's campus normally rented out to students.

He read a story in Friday's Herald about Langley's losing her home to the storm after the shooting death in Virginia of her daughter, Katherine Ballard McManus.

Hastings did not order coffee and count his own blessings and move on with his life. He offered Langley the College Avenue home through mid-August, when the college kids come back.

For free.

No cost for rent. No cost for utilities, or the furnishings inside. No cost for the washer or dryer that Brenda Langley after just minutes in her new home was already using because she needed a few loads of clothes washed so the kids would have what they needed for school Thursday.

All of it, free.

"We just wanted to help any way that we could," Hastings said, simply.

Yet help for Langley since the story ran Friday about this grandmother raising the children of her murdered daughter, who could not afford the funeral and then had to deal with a tree falling on her house, has been more than a home.

The picture Friday on the front page - Langley standing in the street holding the hand of her slain daughter's daughter, while saying she still believed in the goodness of God - brought action by dozens.

Donations poured in to White Oak Manor by mail. Dollars came by the tiny feet of little old ladies bearing hand-written cards with fixed-income dollars inside they could not afford to give away - but gave away anyway.

Money came in from a burly biker, crying, who had lost his job yet said Brenda Langley needed the $100 bill in his hand more than he did.

Thousands of dollars - enough to pay for the funeral, and for Langley to find a permanent place to live

One hand-written note to Langley read: "I hope this little money I can offer can help you."

The note came with $5.

'Incredible' support

"The outpouring for Brenda has been just incredible," said Jane Alexander, the administrator at White Oak who is handling collections. "So many people, most of them anonymous, who just wanted to help and didn't want to leave their name."

Some people just found Langley herself, near her old house or at her job, and pressed wrinkled dollars and heavy checks into her hands.

"Every one of them, every person, has just been so nice and been worrying about these grand-young'uns of mine," Langley said. "Every one of them is a blessing in our lives."

There was one gift that left all involved - Langley, the White Oak staff, including the people in suits and the people in work clothes - in tears and speechless.

The two youngest grandchildren Langley is raising attend Northside Elementary School, just around the corner from the crushed house. Students and staff at Northside had already collected money to help pay for the funeral of Katherine Ballard McManus.

Still, a kid from the school, in the same second-grade class as Lizzie, the youngest, asked his mama to drive him to the nursing home.

The boy dropped off a plastic baggie filled with all the money the kid had in this world: Two dollar bills, some silver - and an 8-year-old lifetime collection of pennies.

The kid told the receptionist at White Oak one sentence, echoing what so many people have said over the last few days in Rock Hill - a place that showed again after this storm that it is a community of wide shoulders with room for more.

"I just wanna help," the kid said.

On that porch, Brenda Langley's smile thanked that little boy, too.

Want to help?

White Oak Manor is assisting Brenda Langley. To donate:

Call Jane Alexander at 803-366-8155

E-mail [email protected]

Write to White Oak Manor, 1915 Ebenezer Road, Rock Hill, S.C. 29732.