Badger Girls Tragedy: Father of 3 Who Died in Conn. Fire Launches Memorial Fund
Dad of girls who died in Connecticut Christmas fire speaks of his grief, girls.
April 24, 2012— -- The father of Lily, Sarah and Grace Badger, the three girls who died last year in a Christmas Day fire in their Connecticut home, has spoken publicly for the first time of his grief, his daughters and his glimmers of something positive coming from their deaths by drawing attention to a new fund he has launched in their memory.
"Out of the darkness came this [fund]," Matthew Badger, 46, told ABC News.
The nation awoke to the news Dec. 25 that the three young girls had been killed along with their grandparents in their Stamford home. Investigators say hot fireplace embers -- cleaned out of the fireplace because the girls worried about Santa, and discarded in the back of the house -- sparked the blaze.
"There probably has not been a worse Christmas Day in the city of Stamford," Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia said.
The girls' mother, advertising executive Madonna Badger, and her boyfriend, Michael Borcina, the contractor on the house, were the only survivors. Madonna Badger is said still to be in deep isolated mourning.
Matthew Badger, the father of the three girls, has decided to turn the grief from his loss into something positive, and has launched the Lily Sarah Grace Fund, which will offer money to elementary school teachers who incorporate the use of art -- a passion his daughters shared -- into their teaching. He hopes to draw attention to what will become a living monument to his girls.
"The Lily Sarah Grace Fund is my love for my girls," he said. "The instinct of a father for me was that I needed to love my children … and that love I channeled into the creation of the Lily Sarah Grace Fund. I need to try and make them have made a mark on the planet, and not have just died in vain."
Click here to learn more about the Lily Sarah Grace Fund
Speaking publically for the first time since their deaths, Badger recalled his last days with 9-year-old Lily and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Gracie, and discussed his feelings at the time of the tragedy.
"I was with them for an entire week in my apartment," Badger said, smiling when he thinks back. "It was dancing. We had our own Christmas tree and that photograph was when we had opened our presents they were all very happy."
Badger said he often studies a snapshot from that final day with Lily, Sarah and Gracie, a day meant to be just one of so many more. He said that after the fire, he struggled to understand why this could happen to his girls.
"It was very difficult to see … Why did this happen? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And I'd just seen them the day before," Badger told ABC News. "The experience … of memories about their lives has been one of … tears. And every time I open up my computer and look at pictures of them, I am moved."
In the interview with ABC's Claire Shipman for "Good Morning America," Badger discussed how he has channeled his grief and memories of his girls into something tangible for others.
"It's really hard," he said. "People treat their grief in different ways. Either they head straight into the wind [or] some people hide behind a rock. …I had a very hard time making sense of what life was."
Through the fund, Badger has been able to channel his grief and refocus his life in a spiritual way he never anticipated.
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