Wish List: A family of 6 looks to rebuild a home after devastating fire

Semeone Mundy was sitting in the Madisonville public library with his 10-year-old brother, Daniell, when a neighbor ran in and told him their house was on fire.

“All you had to do was walk out of the library and you could see the smoke,” Mundy said. “There were five other fire trucks… it was lights everywhere… It was a crazy scene.”

The 18-year-old didn’t care about the burning house. He wasn’t thinking about where they were going to go next. The oldest of four, his family’s safety was “the only thing that was on my mind,” he said.

Now at the holiday season what's on Mundy's mind is assuring his family has furniture, winter clothing, food and utility and rent assistance as it continues to recover from the impact of the fire. That's why Mundy is counting on Enquirer and Cincinnati.com readers who support the Wish List, the annual holiday fundraising drive coordinated with the United Way of Greater Cincinnati.

Readers may donate to the Wish List through a coupon in the newspaper or online at www.uwgc.org/wishlist.

The fire started in the kitchen, and the flames tore through the house. The blaze melted the bathroom, consumed the dining room and bedroom walls and collapsed the top floor.

“That night we were homeless,” Mundy's father Kenneth Mundy said. “We lost almost everything.”

The family of six was forced into temporary housing for six months. They lived together in one room a little smaller than the size of the principal’s office at DePaul Cristo Rey High School, where Semeone Mundy  is a senior.

“It was a challenge,” Kenneth Mundy said. “I was working, but we were living day to day.”

Kenneth Mundy works seven days a week to try to keep up. He’s gone days without eating, so that his kids have enough food. He’s sat alone in his truck and cried and cried, but he never let them see his struggle.

“Every time I came home, I always kept my family laughing, no matter how bad the day was,” he said. “That’s what kept us going. And our faith in God.”

Immediately after the fire, the family received help from volunteers at the Red Cross, neighbors, their church pastor and staff at DePaul Cristo Rey High School.

“Everything we have at this point was given,” Kenneth Mundy said. “People just came together. I never imagined people would be so nice.”

The family moved into its current apartment in Pleasant Ridge in September and is  trying to make it feel like home, for now.

Kenneth Mundy said being able to go on a family vacation, which they haven’t done in years, would be the cherry on top.

“We appreciate anything that we can use that will help us out,” Semeone said. “It would be a blessing for us because we’ve been through so much.”

Despite being handed this tough situation, “they really keep a great spirit about life,” said Cheri Jordan, the college and career mentor coordinator at the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative.

She first met Semeone Mundy about two years ago when he came to the organization as a student worker. She said he's shown such strength throughout the past year.

“We didn’t even know this happened, because Semeone came in smiling every day,” Jordan said.

The Mundy family truly knows how it feels to be poor and how it feels so go without, they said. But, through it all, they’ve stayed close.

“We are resilient,” said Semeone Mundy said, who received his first college acceptance letter Wednesday. “No matter what goes your way, you focus on things that do make you smile.”