Children Help Man Who Lost Home in Riot
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Rubar Magwood saved his minimum-wage salary and tips for years to buy his home, and cried as it burned down last fall.
The little house, where the 67-year-old Magwood and his late wife had reared their family, succumbed to rioting that broke out after a white police officer fatally shot a black teenager. Magwood returned from a friend’s on Nov. 13 to find police had blocked off his street, which was engulfed in flames. The next morning, he returned to the charred remains.
“Everything burned off,†Magwood told the St. Petersburg Times. “My wife’s pictures, antique things, . . . furniture, everything.â€
That day at Perkins Elementary in Magwood’s neighborhood, second-grade teacher Anne Weller talked with her students about the man she’d seen crying on the news.
The class was reading “A Chair for My Mother,†a book about a waitress and her daughter who lose their home to fire. In the story, the neighborhood chips in to replace the lost belongings, and the mother gets what she’d always dreamed of: a soft chair in which to rest.
Knowing little about Magwood--who now lives in a $300-a-month apartment after living with a daughter awhile--other than that “his house burned down and it made him cry,†as student Alexandra Newlon put it, the class decided to buy him a comfortable chair.
The children raised $400 by selling T-shirts they designed commemorating peace. They picked out a small kitchen table, two chairs and a green recliner. Badcock Furniture, which lost one of its stores in the disturbance, gave them a price break.
This month, they presented him with their gifts.
“You kids saved my day,†Magwood told them. “I want to thank you for everything you did. I can rock myself to sleep now.â€
