For the Murphy family of Phoenix, AZ, 2015 couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. Three days into the new year, the family lost their home and everything they owned in an electrical fire, leaving Thomas, Diane, and their four teenaged children with absolutely nothing.
But then something amazing happened. After their story was featured on a local news station, word of their misfortune spread all over the country. And people responded in the most beautiful way possible.
Within days, what started as a story of unthinkable tragedy became an uplifting testament to the incredible power of human kindness, as thousands of good-hearted strangers pitched in to mail the Murphy family lunch meat. It began with just a few bags of meat here and there, and the Murphys just assumed it would taper off. But then it snowballed into a full-blown avalanche of generosity: peppered turkey, applewood turkey, salami of every conceivable thickness, tavern ham, low-sodium ham, Polish ham, pepperoni minis, black forest ham, circular bologna, square bologna—massive shipments of lunch meat were arriving at every hour of the day.
Some gave a lot, like one business executive who decided to surprise the family by unloading a year’s supply of pastrami on them all at once, while others gave what little they could, including a single mother from Texas who could only afford to send a quarter pound of roast beef. No matter how much people gave, though, they were giving from the bottom of their hearts.
Now, in the rubble where the Murphy family’s house once was stands something wonderful: staggering quantities of wet meat covering nearly every square inch of their property, all of it glistening in the sun like a nitrate-dense beacon of hope. The family now has more lunch meat than they had even before the fire, signaling that better days are ahead.
So inspiring!
Of course, the Murphy family still has a long way to go before everything is fully back to normal, and if you’d like to help them as they continue rebuilding their lives, feel free to send lunch meat donations to:
The Murphy Family
201 East Jefferson St.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
