Students helping Lynn family displaced by fire

LYNN – Two Lynn schools are rallying around a single mother with three children who lost everything in an early morning blaze at 192 Eastern Avenue on Monday.Sarah McCarthy said the blaze started on a porch of her second floor apartment and a fire alarm woke her up at 3:30 a.m.”I jumped up and could see the fire on the porch through the kitchen window,” she said. “It was spreading so fast and jumped into the kitchen real fast. I’m just so grateful we got out and the children are OK.”McCarthy said she and her children Ryan, Ashley and Jessica Cook had just moved into the apartment in September.”We just got settled,” she said. “It was really devastating. We lost everything.”The American Red Cross put the family up in a Danvers hotel for three nights, but now McCarthy has to pay for the hotel herself or find another place to stay.McCarthy, who works at Uno’s Chicago Grill in Swampscott, said she has spent most of her time on the telephone trying to find a place to stay, but family shelters turned her away because her family stayed in a shelter within the past year due to financial difficulties.”We got evicted from our apartment because we couldn’t afford it,” she said. “I worked so hard to get our lives back together and now this.”That’s where the Aborn Elementary School and McCarthy’s two youngest children’s classmates come in.Principal Anne Graul sent a note home with Aborn students on Wednesday encouraging students to wear their favorite hat to school today and donate $1 to help the family.”This school is a wonderful giving community,” she said. “This school is a family and we take care of each other.”Ashley, who is 13, attends Marshall Middle School, and that school is rallying around the family as well. Principal Rich Cowdell said the student body and faculty are extremely generous.”They’ll be making an effort to support the family at this time,” he said. “Obviously we sympathize with the family and will do everything we can to help them.”McCarthy said even though she doesn’t know what tomorrow holds she is trying to keep life as normal as possible for her children.”I’m so just so grateful they are OK,” she said. “I get them up in the morning and get them to school. Then I get on the phone and start making calls looking for a place to stay.”The family is in the process of setting up an account to accept donations but in the meantime gift cards, cash donations and checks made payable to Sarah McCarthy can be dropped off at Aborn School, 409 Eastern Ave., in Lynn.