Students rally to the aid of another Marysville

Published 10:22 pm Saturday, March 28, 2009

Celena Davis didn’t know about Australia’s killer brushfires when she heard on the radio that a town called Marysville was destroyed.

A fifth-grader at Marysville’s Liberty Elementary School, Celena was with her grandmother, Toni Kief, when they heard a National Public Radio report shortly after the February fires.

For a moment, the girl thought the broadcast was about her Marysville.

“She thought she might be the last surviving member of her town,” said Kief, who lives in Snohomish. Kief said her granddaughter was staying with her when she first learned that fires had burned the entire town of Marysville near Melbourne. Almost 100 of the town’s 600 people were reported to have died in the fires.

“She thought Marysville, Washington, had gone up in flames,” said Celena’s father, Rob Davis.

As Kief explained to her granddaughter what had happened, Celena came up with a way to help. Worried that fire survivors would have nothing to read, Celena decided to collect and send books to Australia. She recruited her 11-year-old cousin, Casey Smith, to help.

“She called me and asked if I wanted to do it with her,” said Casey, who’s in fifth grade at Kellogg Marsh Elementary School in Marysville.

An avid reader whose favorite books are the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, Casey was quick to help. Kief helped the girls create a flier and a Web site, www.marysville4marysville.com. They made posters and spread the word of their efforts at their schools. They also contacted the Marysville Library, part of the Sno-Isle Regional Library System, area bookstores, and other towns around the country that share the Marysville name.

“They both love their books,” said Penny Dry, Casey’s grandmother and Kief’s sister.

Dry said Casey went room to room through her house, collecting unused books. Soon, donated books began piling up.

“We just wanted to help people,” Casey said Friday. “I didn’t think a whole town would burn down.”

Dry said both girls couldn’t conceive of people in Australia, while trying to rebuild their town, being without anything to read. “What would they read after they were done working for the day?” she said.

“It started to snowball, and Toni started getting e-mail,” Dry said.

What Kief learned was that the town not only had no library, but that it could be years before there would be any need for books. In contact with people in Australia, she learned that Marysville in Australia’s state of Victoria had once been visited by a bookmobile. What’s needed now, though, is money to help, not books.

“Toni got e-mail that it will be a very long time before a bookmobile would come back,” Dry said.

The girls’ mission has changed. They plan to set up donation spots, and perhaps a booth at the Marysville Strawberry Festival in June. “If someone makes a donation, they’d get a book,” Dry said.

“The girls were just devastated by this,” Dry said. She believes that no matter what happens with the books or the girls’ fundraising, their effort has been positive.

“If nothing else, the empathy of these girls has them seeing the plight of others,” Dry said. “They were touched by someone else’s hardship, and willing to do something about it.”

For the adults, seeing tragedy through children’s eyes has put economic worries close to home in perspective.

“Granted, we may not have jobs, but we still have our homes and our town,” Dry said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425- 339-3460, muhlstein@ heraldnet.com.

How to help fire victims

To learn more about the efforts of two Marysville girls to help fire victims in Australia, go to www.marysville4 marysville.com.

The Australian Red Cross has established the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Fund to help people devastated by recent fires. The agency’s brushfire appeal will close April 17. For more information, go to www.redcross.org.au.