Kimberly Crowell held back tears last week as she sifted through her belongings charred by a recent house fire.
While Crowell, 48, and her daughter, Krista Rodriguez, looked through Crowell’s belongings in her former Ravenna rental, they found a few items they thought they might salvage. Inside a scorched china hutch drawer, Crowell discovered her deceased mother’s 1965 high school graduation tassel and her daughter’s 2008 tassel.
She sighed as she found a letter from her son during his former military basic training days.
Aside from a few keepsakes — her mother and father’s wedding photo, photo albums and her son’s baby book — most everything else was lost in the house fire, including a beloved cat, Ranger.
“Pretty much everything in my whole life was in here,” said Crowell, who had lived in the rental for six years.