Grief and Gratitude
/Julia and George Carpenter survived a devastating house fire with community support
By Ellen Orr
photo by shane darby.
Around 3:15 a.m. on the morning of October 17th, 2024, George Carpenter awoke in his second-story bedroom to a distant beeping sound. He roused his wife, Julia. “What’s that noise?” he asked groggily. Julia got out of bed and shuffled downstairs toward the sound. When she reached the end of the staircase, she saw smoke coming from under a buffet: the photo album she’d recently put there was inexplicably on fire. She shouted for George as she picked up the burning book, intending to toss it outside. But when she opened the door, the influx of oxygen caused flames to erupt all around her. She screamed more loudly.
The couple made it outside with only the pajamas they’d donned hours earlier. Their home of 29 years—with a lifetime of possessions and their dogs, Sweetie and Leon, trapped inside—was burning.
On October 17th at 3:12 a.m., the fire started. Within 12 minutes, the house was engulfed in flames. submitted photo.
Julia and George have been married since 1980. George proposed mere months after the two began dating, and they were wed shortly after, on October 18th. Then came children: two daughters, Katie and Sarah. As the children grew, so did the family’s need for space. In 1995, the perfect old home, just two houses down the street, was listed for sale. Built in 1914, the two-story Craftsman featured a charming front porch, spacious backyard, and enough bedrooms—all on the upper level—for the family of four. On Labor Day of 1995, they moved in.
Almost three decades later, the day before their 44th wedding anniversary, George and Julia sat across the street from 2912 Hazel St., faces blackened from smoke, and watched as their home turned to rubble and ash. Neighbors provided comfort and blankets, and called 911. Though there was never any hope of saving the Carpenters’ house—“Those old houses are like kindling, with their pine floors,” George explained—the firefighters worked hard to contain the spread. Julia, who had tried in vain to wake her next-door neighbor by pounding on his door, insisted that the fire department enter his home and evacuate him, which they did. (His home also caught fire, though it was not destroyed.) Both George and Julia emphasized their unending gratitude for the firefighters who worked to control the fire and provided sympathy and support that day.
At 3:29 a.m., Sarah Carpenter received a call from one of her parents’ neighbors. “She said, ‘I want you to know your parents are okay, and they’re standing in front of me, but the house is gone,’” Sarah recalled. “She said, ‘It’s on fire, and it’s gone, and the dogs are in there, and they’re not going to make it, but your parents are okay.’” Sarah called Katie, who lives in Dallas, and drove directly to Hazel St.
“A firefighter told me that they had five minutes or they would not have been here, they wouldn’t have gotten out,” Sarah said through tears. “Walking up and hugging your parents, knowing that . . . I will never forget that moment.”
Firefighters estimated that the Carpenters’ escape window was about five minutes. submitted photo.
Footage from a nearby security camera shows that the fire began at 3:12 a.m. The cause of the fire is unknown, though it appears to have started under the pier-and-beam foundation and was likely electrical. By 3:24, the entire structure was engulfed in flames.
Before most of Texarkana was awake, word had inexplicably spread throughout the community. When Sarah called James Bramlett, George’s boss at Farmers Bank & Trust, at around 6 a.m., he answered by saying, “Oh my God, I just heard—where is your dad?” Shortly after that call, George and Julia, who had been at the scene for hours, were taken to the emergency room for evaluation and breathing treatments, and Sarah went to Walmart to buy necessities for her parents. When Sarah called James again to let him know they had gone to the hospital, he replied that he was already there, right beside them.
One of the few surviving “before” photos of the Carpenters’ home, salvaged from the wreckage.
“My goodness, the friends and loved ones who have reached out to us—it’s just overwhelming,” George said. “And [the Farmers team] has been so supportive. It really makes me proud to say I work for Farmers Bank.”
Other friends who showed up that morning included Mike Craven, who “kept having to walk off because he was so teary-eyed,” Sarah said, as well as Diane and Randy King, who provided George and Julia with a vehicle to use that day. Royce James, a “long-time friend,” was headed out of town to hunt when he got the news; he turned around and drove straight to the scene. “He wanted to hug him, and he stayed with him all day.”
Friends Stephanie James and Char Crane were the only reason Julia relented and went to the ER. “They basically tied my arms behind my back and said, ‘It’s not a choice,’” she said. They met her at the hospital and “wore the nurse out” advocating for their friend.
Thankfully, neither George nor Julia have experienced any major health effects; besides coughing up smoke for days, the worst physical ailment has been a burn and subsequent infection on Julia’s left foot—an unfortunate but relatively minor injury.
The physical effects pale in comparison to the mental and emotional anguish. The Carpenters shared that the healing process has been marked by ambivalence—grief and gratitude in equal measure.
“A good friend of ours [Alex Barlow Jumper] has gone through the same thing, and she wrote me such a sweet message that said, ‘I know a lot of people don’t understand this grief,’” George shared. “It is so much grief. Seeing everything, you don’t know how [both grief and gratitude] could exist at the same time. But they do—both equally as powerful as the other.
“When you go through something like this, you don’t take things for granted as much.”
“We feel so much gratitude that we actually walked out and have so many friends and loved ones—God has put us in this position so we can enjoy them longer,” George continued. “No doubt, it’s because of the man upstairs that we were able to walk out. He wasn’t finished with us yet.”
The entire family has been touched by this event, including Julia and George’s grandchildren. Katie’s son George, named after his grandfather, turned 9 years old in November, and he told his parents that, in lieu of a birthday party, he wanted to spend time with his family in Texarkana.
It’s not only blood relatives who have been deeply moved by the Carpenters’ tragedy and survival. Michaelyn Liles Marracino, whom Julia described as one of their “extra kids,” provided them with substitute wedding rings upon learning that their originals had been lost in the fire. Cristi Hoyt, a local photographer and friend of the family, donated her services, taking portraits of the entire clan. Friends and acquaintances have reached out, offering everything from meals and gift cards to places to stay.
After staying with George’s sister, Jane Ann (Janie), for a few weeks, the Carpenters moved into a fully furnished rental house, only a few blocks from the remains of their former home. Once the top layer of debris has been professionally cleared, George and Julia will attempt to excavate jewelry and other items from the rubble. But once the ash has settled and the wreckage has been fully assessed, the Carpenters intend to leave the property in the past and list the lot for sale.
“It’s a new beginning,” George said.
Whatever else the future has in store, the Carpenters are certain about a couple of things: they will continue to keep their most valuable possessions and important documents in a safe-deposit box, and they will always ensure they have working smoke detectors.
“I had just changed the smoke detector batteries about a month earlier,” Julia said. “I just thought, ‘You know, I don’t remember the last time I changed those.’ So I changed all the smoke alarms, which is not something I generally walk around doing.”
“We’ve been guilty of—you know, when the batteries are low, you get that beep, and you take them out instead of changing them right away,” George added. “But doing the maintenance that needs to be done can save lives.”
The Carpenters’ lives have been changed in more ways than just the material and practical, however; their perspective is fundamentally different.
Left to right, Tyler and Katie Moore with children George and Jude, George and Julia Carpenter, and Sarah Carpenter with daughter Anna Mae Petty. photo by cristi hoyt photography.
“[The day of the fire] I thought, ‘We are never going to recover,’” Sarah shared. “It was just so traumatic. But even just a week later, I called Katie and was like, ‘I really think Mom and Dad are good. They’ve been surrounded by so much love from family and friends in the community.’ I hadn’t known how many people truly love my parents.”
“It’s just unbelievable,” Julia said. “It really is. It makes you realize that people are really good. I mean, there are bad ones, but the good ones far outweigh the bad, and I’ll always believe that.”
“When you go through something like this, you don’t take things for granted as much,” George added. “You know, the sunsets look a lot better. You’re really taking it all in—because you’re still alive.”