Community Embraces Mom, 13 Kids After Fire
As the trucks of the Cooper Volunteer Fire Department rolled toward the plume of smoke northeast of town a few people were already on the phone, said writer Bill Marvel.
“Within an hour almost everyone had heard: Steven, the 16-year-old had led the three toddlers out of the flames,” he said. “Then a remarkable thing happened: People starting coming forward with help, one or two at first, then dozens, and, before the weekend, was out, hundreds.”
“It’s typical of this town to do that,” says Sharon Chambers, a Cooper native who teaches education at nearby Texas A & M-Commerce, in a recent article.
Of course, there’s Marilyn Nichols herself and her 13 kids, a family as remarkable in its way as the community that came to its assistance, the article stated.
Saturday morning, March 25th, Marilyn had driven four of the children to Paris for a soccer game when she heard about the fire.
“We had a game plan in case of fire,” she said.
Nine months after they moved to Cooper their house burned down, a fire that insurance investigators blamed on hot grease thrown into a wastebasket by one of the children according to documents.
If it happened again, Marilyn said they were all going to go to the top of the driveway, well away from the house, the family reported.
That’s where Barbara Colvin found Steven, Naja, Sherry, and Timmy when she got to the scene of the most recent fire, fire department officials report. She said she found Steven in a state of shock. The baby, Joshua, had been fed and was sleeping in Marilyn’s bedroom, according to volunteers. Timmy is four but he’s never learned to talk his mother said, candidly.
Arriving firefighters found flames already licking around the eaves of the house, says D.D. Young in a report.
By the time Marilyn pulled up, Timmy was in the ambulance and a Lifestar helicopter had been summoned from Greenville, paramedics said.
Volunteer firefighters, meanwhile, had donned oxygen masks and carried out Joshua’s body.
Marilyn moved here from Tulsa about ten years ago, looking for a place in the country not too far from hospitals where she could earn her living as a registered nurse, according to research.
Frank, then 17, was the oldest, records show.
When Nichols married John Nichols 22 years ago she asked what he thought was the ideal family, she said.
Since then she has cared for more than a dozen children, adopting most of them, writes Marvel.
“I always did babies,” Marilyn explained. “I don’t do foster care.”
Nichols holds son Timmy’s hands as he sleeps to protect his skin grafts from the fire, Marvel reported.
It’s helped that she’s a registered nurse, trained in heart surgery, adolescent psychiatry, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and neonatal care, Marvel wrote.
“Her attitude is ‘If God sends them to me, I’m going to take them,'” says Barbara Colvin, an administrative assistant at the school who lives down the road from Nichols’ place, in a recent interview.
“They have gone through our schools and have excelled to the highest degree,” Marion Miller, who owns Miller’s Drug Store in Cooper, told Marvel.
At almost any school event, friends day, you can hear Marilyn’s voice in the crowd, always urging the kids on, always positive.
