On May 12, 2014, our life was turned upside down. A forest fire consumed our family garage taking with it so many countless items, memories and yes, “stuff.”

Among this “stuff” was our fleet of four snowmobiles, brand new boat, dirt bikes, our complete outdoor wood boiler business inventory, tools and trailers.

On top of that, pictures, yearbooks, heirlooms, and so much more. 

We would like to thank everyone who came out that day to battle this raging blaze and in the end, saved our home as well as our pet bunnies, who were caged close-by the garage.

We would like to single out the following individuals:

Gary Hoffman for following your firefighter instinct and investigating the smell of smoke. If you hadn’t responded like you did, we may be in a totally different situation now.

Thank you to Dave Roberts for attempting to keep the fire away from our garage. Also thank you for rescuing our Yamaha Rhino side by side in attempt to save our boat. We are extremely grateful for your efforts.

Thank you to volunteer fireman Ron “Spot” Ste-Marie for the wonderful job keeping water on our home and in the end, saving it. You’re our hero!

Thank you to Inlet Fire Chief Don Townsend and all Inlet Volunteer Firefighters, EMS personnel and Ladies Auxiliary for all your hard work saving what you could.

Thank you to Eagle Bay Fire Chief Shane Beach as well as Cindy Sauer and Julie Manzi for saving our bunnies, Cuddles and Bambi. The day was bad enough but thanks to you, we had no loss of life.

Thank you to all members of Eagle Bay, Old Forge, Big Moose, Raquette Lake and Otter Lake Fire Departments for all you do, especially on this day.

Thank you to Julie Benzo for running up from Utica to be with us and helping us make decisions that were very difficult to make during this awfully upsetting time of our lives.

Also thank you Julie for the fantastic dinner you and Natalie brought us a few days later, not to mention the gift cards for the girls and the lily for the pond. You have a heart of gold and we can never thank you enough. Thank you for all your advice as well!

Thank you to Julie and Sean Manzi for the Pastabilities dinner the day of the fire. Who knows if we would’ve eaten if it weren’t for you!

Thank you to Jen Lamphear for the flowers and the hugs. You’re very thoughtful.

Thank you to Tony Thornton for the “escort” that day up South Shore Road. Britney and Heather were on their way to Utica for Britney’s MRI appointment and they got the call about the fire when they were south of Old Forge.

Heather figured South Shore Road would have less traffic so she could get home faster. She came upon a vehicle who realized who she was, Tony popped his emergency light on top of his vehicle and escorted them all the way home. Thank you for that!!

Thank you to Bennie and Kathy Beauchamp for the amazing lasagna dinner. That was very thoughtful.

Thank you to Norm Stark and crew for your fast response to repair the damage done to our satellite dish.

A huge thank you goes out to Dennis “Murf” Murphy for building us a beautiful new wood cart as soon as you got word our old one burned in the garage. We didn’t miss a weekend of campfire wood sales thanks to you! You are amazing.

Also thank you and Heather Briggs for the gift cards for the girls as well as dinner. You guys are amazing friends.

Thank you to our friend Deb Logsdon for the card and gift to buy dinner with.

Thank you to Shawn and Lori Hansen and Don and Amy Townsend for your gifts, as well as The Cousins That Care. You are all such good-hearted people.

Thank you to Chris Giruzzi for all your advice. We are extremely grateful to have you in our lives.

As time marched on and we waited for approval to clean up, we had so many offers to help. When we finally got the green light, we could not believe how ready and willing some people were to help.

We can never thank our buddies Pete and Laurie Sala and Paul and Ann Moeller as well as Pete Carlucci and Connor Glasser for all your help sifting through the dirty, disgusting rubble in hopes of finding anything that could be saved.

We were able to pull out very minimal but you all helped make the unpleasant job so much easier. It was a very emotional day and we are forever grateful you all were there to be by our sides.

Thank you all as well as Dennis Murphy and Heather Briggs for your help around the yard, in preparation of our new garage.

We’d like to thank our parents, Ron and Kathy Hansen and John and Lynda Levi for all your help, guidance and support through this whole mess. We couldn’t have made it this far without you.

Thank you to Julie and Sean Manzi and the entire crew of Construction Effects for stepping up to the plate and offering to help us get through this and for making the rebuilding process much easier.

We hope we didn’t miss anyone who helped us, as the last four months have been a crazy whirlwind, roller coaster of a ride.

Thank you to all our friends who have sent words of kindness via email, text, Facebook, phone or stopping over.

Thank you to the community members who sent cards and well wishes. We never would’ve dreamed we would be in the situation we are in but we are extremely grateful for all the people who have touched our lives in one way or another.

We may never get back what we had inside that garage but we know we are surrounded by the most loving, caring, considerate group of family and friends we could ask for.

There have been many ups and downs since that day in May, and we’re sure there will be many more, but we can lay our heads down at night and know there are people who will be there for us in the snap of a finger if need be.

And for that we are incredibly grateful.

Sincerely,

The Levi Family, Inlet

Jerry, Heather, Melanie and Britney