In Perry County, people like being left alone. But when tragedy visits, no one here is on their own. So when fire swept the Clouse family farmhouse just outside of Blain, taking seven of the family's eight children, all of Perry County rallied like never before. 
 
 There were so many fundraisers being held for the Clouse family, the various sponsors had to wait in line for available space at fire halls, picnic grounds and public spaces. 
 
 Read the Clouse family's heartbreaking story here. 
 
 
 
 There were bake sales, chicken barbecues and in-kind and cash donations. Amish, Mennonite and "English," alike, banded together and built the Clouses' new home, which is located across from the original house's ruins. People who had never milked a cow in their life stepped forward to give a hand on the family dairy farm. 
 
 At its height, the Clouses' church was receiving 500 checks a day. Cards came in stacks. Exactly how much was raised remains confidential. But the outpouring that began in Perry County was plain to see. 
 
 "The town was very protective of the family," says Blain resident Connie Zellers, whose late husband helped fight the March 2011 fire. "Everybody was." 
 
 It was simply a natural reaction for people to want to give whatever they could to the family who had lost the most precious things of all, residents explained. 
 
 "There was such an outpouring," says Tonya Worthington, who works at the Hardware Cafe on Blain's main street. "The whole county and beyond." 
 
 "People didn't know what else to do," adds Zellers. 
 
 In wake of the tragedy, townsfolk traded tears across the counter at the Blain Family Restaurant and Hotel. Long time waitress Lou Ann witnessed it all. Ever since, each year come early March, people remember. In fact, few here have ever forgotten. 
 
 "It was hard on our firefighters," says Lou Ann, who declined to give her last name, saying everyone in town knows her. "It was hard up at the school. The teachers took it hard, the children, everyone. I think all of Perry County hurt. Everyone just wanted to help. It was just the compassion people felt." 
 
 At Blain Elementary, where three of the Clouse children taken in the fire attended, there is a memorial bench and seven planted trees, one for each of the young lives lost. Neither Blain Elementary nor West Perry School District Superintendent Michael O'Brien would comment for this story. 
 
 Time seems not to have healed these wounds. Five years on, and the community continues to grieve. 
 
 "It's still so fresh in people's memories," Lou Ann says. 
 
 Tragic fire that killed 7 children in Pa. still haunts those who fought it 
 
 "Every time I drive by there, I think of those children, adds Zellers. "I think everybody does. They were just the sweetest little things." 
 
 She paused then to shake her head, as if attempting to shake off an unexpected rush of emotion. 
 
 "For me, it's difficult," Zellers resumes after gathering herself. "It doesn't seem like five years to me. Every time you drive by, you think of that family, the fire and those kids. 
 
 If the grief in the town remains so great and so raw, the people here can only imagine what the Clouse family must feel. 
 
 "I don't know how you even begin to deal with that, to go through something like that," Worthington comments, shaking her head. 
 
 "We grieve for them," she says of the family. ||||| The 7 Clouse children that were killed in a house fire on March 8, 2011. They ranged in age from 9 months to 11 years old. 
 
 The cruel tricks of time sneak up on the busy mother. It matters not that her hands are now full with five young children, another one on the way. When Janelle Clouse least expects it, the memories of the seven children she lost still manage to stop her breath and halt her heart. 
 
 It happened this February, when it suddenly dawns on Janelle that her oldest daughter would be turning sweet 16. Only there will be no party. No friends over to the house. No teenage girls huddled together, giggling and probably talking about boys. 
 
 Not at the Clouse household, just outside Blain in western Perry County. As filled up as it is with life - five beautiful children ages 10 months to 8 years old - so much more is missing. 
 
 That absence begins with Christina, the February birthday girl who'd be having that milestone celebration. As hard as she tries, Janelle can't imagine her beautiful girl a day over 11. Christina is forever frozen in time. 
 
 All because of the fire. 
 
 "When someone dies, time kind of stops," Janelle explains. "You can't picture them beyond that. I don't know why. I just can't picture it, honestly." 
 
 The mind just doesn't work this way. It bars us from aging loved ones who have passed away. None of this stops Janelle from trying. She imagines hosting a sweet 16 party for Christina. The house packed with giggling teen-age girls with not so much as a care in the world. 
 
 "I'm sure she would want to start driving," Janelle says of Christina at 16. "Hopefully, she wouldn't want to start dating. Probably, she would want to go over a friend's house on the weekends." 
 
 In other words, all those things teenagers are wont to do. They are the things 33-year-old Janelle never got to do, not after becoming pregnant with Christina at 17. 
 
 It's just one of the tricks that reach out from the past to stun this busy mother. There are six other birthdays that are no longer celebrated. Each one of those dates resonate like an ache in the heart. 
 
 There are six other faces frozen at the precise moment Janelle Clouse last glimpsed her children, all of them together in that crowded but happy farmhouse as she set out for the evening milking. 
 
 "You remember them all at the age they were at," Janelle says. 
 
 Five years ago, the Clouse family was a houseful, all right. Eight children in all, from age nine months on up to Christina at 11. She and her 9-year-old sister Isabelle (everyone called her Izzy) helped mind the younger ones, along with doing their daily dairy farm chores. All were girls, save for Brady, the 7-year-old brother. 
 
 "When someone dies, time kind of stops. You can't picture them beyond that." -- Janelle Clouse 
 
 On that fateful March night, which at the time seemed as plain and ordinary as any other, the kids were packed into the warm farmhouse. Some were doing homework. Some were playing. Nine-month-old Samantha was down in her crib. 
 
 Janelle was out in the nearby barn. Her husband, Ted, was on his nightly milk truck run, making collections at other dairy farms within a 40-mile radius. Such was the family's routine. 
 
 It was hard work, but a good life. Great, in fact, when it came to raising the children. 
 
 "They were what you call innocent," Ted, 47, with a sunny disposition, says of his big, happy brood back then. 
 
 Then, out of nowhere, everything changed. 
 
 'Playing With Smoke' 
 
 The night of March 8, 2011, became anything but routine. Leah, the 3-year-old, entered the barn to find her mother. The little girl's eyes were saucer-wide. Her face seemed drained of color. Fright radiated off of Leah like heat. 
 
 Janelle knew something was wrong even before the little girl spoke. Leah's curious words of warning couldn't begin to describe the enormity of the tragedy about to take place. 
 
 "Miranda is playing with smoke," Leah said, referring to her 18-month-old sister. 
 
 Janelle didn't waste time questioning the little girl. She dashed to the barn door, only to see flames lighting the dark. She smelled smoke on the wind. 
 
 The farmhouse was on fire, and the children were inside. 
 
 Janelle bolted for the house. Already, its first-floor windows glowed with dancing orange light. 
 
 Janelle swung open the front door. A blast of super-heated air blew into her face. Thick smoke pushed her back, even as baby Samantha's crib looked close enough to touch. 
 
 Unable to enter her burning home, Janelle ran to a neighbor's to have them call 911. She ran back home to wait, but found it impossible to stand still. It was going on 11 p.m. She knew Teddy would still be at his first stop on his milk route, so Janelle took off in the van to get him. 
 
 Once there, a disheveled, shell-shocked Janelle managed to spit out the words: "The house is on fire." 
 
 The words didn't register at first. Then, Ted went for the van, racing them all back toward the farmhouse. 
 
 Only when he zoomed up a rise in the road did the glow of flames come into view. Clouds of black smoke bellowed in the night sky. In an instant, Ted realize the worst. 
 
 "No one inside is living," Ted remembers thinking. "There was no way." 
 
 In that devastating moment, a father knew in his heart that seven of his children were gone: Christina, 11, Isabelle, 9, Brady, 7, Hannah, 6, Heidi, 4, Miranda, 18 months, and Samantha, 9 months. 
 
 The children, six girls and a boy, died of carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation, coroner says. They were found in three rooms. 
 
 All of the children died of smoke inhalation long before the flames got to them. The Clouses cling to this fact. 
 
 "I just hope they didn't suffer much," Janelle says, forever tortured over her children's last moments. 
 
 As for the cause? There has never been a precise, definitive ruling. 
 
 The family kept a space heater in the kitchen. On that cold March night, it was turned on. But the hot spot and origin of the fire was determined to be in the living room. 
 
 The best the family and fire officials can figure it is that 18-month-old Miranda, known for toting around an ever-present blanket, must have gotten the fabric too close to the space heater. 
 
 Perhaps, she then ran into the living room with the blanket smoldering and smoking. There, Miranda might have finally tossed it aside. The smoldering blanket easily could have touched off one of the couch cushions the children had pushed onto the living room floor as part of some pretend fort or play path. 
 
 "That's the assumption," Ted says. 
 
 It would also explain little Leah's cryptic message alerting her mom: "Miranda is playing with smoke." 
 
 That smoke just might have been billowing up from Miranda's smoldering blanket after it caught fire on the space heater. 
 
 Less clear is why more of the children didn't follow Leah out of the house. The front door was right there, after all. Even if some were already upstairs, they might have had time to escape. The stairs led directly down to the front door. 
 
 Or perhaps the fire was too fast and there was too much smoke. A child's instinct might be to close his or her bedroom door and wait for help. 
 
 At least the children were together at the end, their parents say. Some were huddled on their beds; some on the floor, as if to escape the smoke. 
 
 "They were scared," Ted explains. "You don't know what to do." 
 
 On the night of the fire, both parents waited at the scene until each one of their children were brought out in body bags. By the time the last child was carried out, it was well after 4 a.m., and tears had warmed Janelle's cold-bitten cheeks. 
 
 "People didn't want us to wait," Ted recalls. "I said, 'no, those are my children.' I don't regret it. We needed to be there." 
 
 Outpouring 
 
 The scale of the Clouse family fire - seven children lost in a single family - made national news. One of the first instincts many people had upon hearing about the tragedy was an overwhelming compulsion to give something to the family that had lost so much. Soon, donations were pouring in. 
 
 The family focused on burying their children. To lead the entire community through the grieving process, the Clouses turned to the pastor who taught Bible study to their children on Wednesday nights. 
 
 Adam Williams, associate pastor at Church of the Living Christ in Loysville, located about three miles away, recognized immediately that his task would be nothing short of finding hope amid all the grief. 
 
 "Suffering is unbearable if you are not aware that God is for you and with you," Williams says. "But if you are aware, suffering has a purpose." 
 
 On the day of the funeral, Pastor Williams offered God's hope and comfort to the Clouse family, the Blain firefighters who attended in dress uniforms, and to the wider community, which suffered a gaping hole in its close-knit fabric. 
 
 "We had the confidence that these young children were with the Lord, and we will see them again someday," Williams recalls of his message. 
 
 "It is painful and difficult right now," he remembers preaching. "But it is a time of hope because of the promises the Lord gives us." 
 
 But could a family suffering such a profound tragedy truly heal? 
 
 Learning to Live 
 
 Life goes on, but how? 
 
 For Ted, it was the work, the regular rhythms and routines of the dairy farm. 
 
 "You hate to lose what you had. But if you dwell on that, you are going to lose those things you have right here," Ted insists. "You never forget, but you move on." 
 
 For Janelle, it took quite a bit longer. Weeks in bed stretched to a month or more. Finally, slowly, she returned to life. She won't call it normal. Nothing would ever quite be normal again. 
 
 "It's a process to go back to really living," she explains. "You're not sure how to go about it." 
 
 The fire re-ordered the Clouse family. Little sister Leah was suddenly the only child. Her aunt made a point of showering Leah with attention as Janelle struggled with her grief. 
 
 Ted would never again drive his milk truck. Instead, he would remain on the farm, a full-time dairyman now. 
 
 Janelle, once surrounded by the glorious chaos of eight children, suddenly faced the isolation of a quiet house. Amid all that quiet came questions, whispered inside her own mind, about whether she had done enough to get the children out of the fully engulfed house. 
 
 "You wonder if there was something more you could do," Janelle explains. "I know there wasn't, but I was the adult who was supposed to be in charge." 
 
 Such questions continue to haunt, but at least all that deafening quiet is gone. One by one, the babies came. 
 
 Seasons rule the farm. So does the circle of life. Ted was adamant that his own family's life must move forward, too. 
 
 Some four months after the fire, along came Gabriel. Just like his angelic namesake, he sounded the beginning of the rebirth of the Clouse family. In short order, Yvonne, 3, followed, then Gordon, 2, and Jedidiah, 10 months. 
 
 Janelle is due to deliver a boy this April. If Ted has his way, there may be more to come. The two parents like to tease each other about this topic, which is far from settled. 
 
 By any measure, the Clouse household is a glorious cacophony again. It rings with the music of children's voices, kiddie shows on TV and toys clattering on the floor. The solid brick house, outfitted with an overabundance of smoke detectors and sprinklers and built across the street from the ruins of the old farmhouse, is brimming again with joyous noise and lots of love. 
 
 Make no mistake, however. None of this replaces what was lost. Not even close. 
 
 When Gabriel arrived, Janelle felt guilty, as if she were attempting to replace her lost children. In time, she came to accept her new blessings on their own terms, even if Gabriel is a spitting image of Brady. So much so that it causes Janelle to catch her breath sometimes. Another of those tricks of time sneaking up. 
 
 These days, Janelle is resigned to the fact that the past will always mix with and influence the present. It will do so in ways that are both a blessing and curse. Ways that will bring both smiles and tears. Ways that will warm the heart or leave a hole that can never be filled. 
 
 "Sometimes, it's not the greatest," Janelle admits. Then, she quickly changes the subject as if avoiding a closed-off room where so much of her pain is stored. 
 
 "It's never going to be the same," she insists. 
 
 This is simply a fact. Plain and utterly inescapable. 
 
 An emptiness remains. It is in the way Ted looks off into the distance when he talks about the fire. It is in Janelle's eyes that provide such a clear window into her still-hurting heart. It is displayed on the mantle in the living room, where seven framed pictures are prominently displayed. 
 
 The faces of the lost children are forever frozen in time. Christina will never turn sweet 16. Brady looks so much like Gabriel, but the latter will never know his older brother. Yvonne is already older than Miranda and Samantha, yet in reality, she is their younger sister. Soon, even baby Jedidiah will pass them by. 
 
 Leah has gone from the little sister, to only child, to now, the big, bossy sister. 
 
 Her parents insist that she remembers nothing from that fateful night. In turn, Leah has lost all memory of her departed brother and sisters, as well. This makes Janelle sad, but Ted thinks it's for the best. 
 
 One time, looking at the pictures of her brother and sisters, Leah said, "These people died in the fire." 
 
 It was as if Leah lacked all realization that "these people" were - and are -- her siblings. 
 
 "Leah doesn't remember," Janelle says. "It's kind of sad, I think." 
 
 "If she asks a question, we answer it," Ted says. "But other than that, it is something better left alone." 
 
 A Mother's Memories 
 
 For Janelle, there is no forgetting, no escaping the past. She wouldn't, even if she could. 
 
 There is no telling what will bring it all back. Recently, it was the death of the family dog, one that used to play with the children Janelle lost. 
 
 His name was Archie, a Springer Spaniel. He was 13. When he died, it was a little like losing her seven children all over again, Janelle says. 
 
 "You have less and less things that you had at the time of the fire," she explains "That dog was one of them. He was one of the things we had with the other children." 
 
 "I like to think of things before the fire," Janelle adds. "But that's all you have anymore - memories." 
 
 Those memories can come rushing back even while shopping at Wal-Mart with the kids. It happens when some well-meaning woman spots Janelle and her five children, then comments on what a big, beautiful family she has. 
 
 The person means well, but Janelle insists on correcting this stranger's statement. 
 
 "That's not all of them. I have 12 children," the proud mother states. 
 
 The stranger seems taken aback, momentarily confused. 
 
 "My, my." 
 
 Then Janelle explains: 
 
 "We lost seven in a fire." 
 
 The stranger's face registers shock at this. 
 
 If the stranger can manage words, perhaps she mumbles, "I'm sorry," before rushing off as if still attempting to comprehend the enormity of such a tragedy. The sheer scale of it. 
 
 Seven children. 
 
 Gone. 
 
 Most people don't know what to say to this. Some try to identify with the loss. Too often, however, they cite losing a parent or other relative. This is far removed from losing a child, let alone seven of them. 
 
 "It feels different when you are burying children," Ted says. "You expect to bury your parents. You never expect to bury your children. It is just not a fact of life." 
 
 A few people upon hearing of the Clouses' enormous loss mention losing a pet, as if to commiserate. Ted and Janelle find this particularly insulting, but never mention it to the person's face. 
 
 Janelle simply smiles and walks away. But afterwards, she admits, "it really kind of angers me." 
 
 The fact is, there's no one who can know what it's like. No one but Ted and Janelle, themselves. 
 
 And their only wish is that they didn't know. 
 
 Still, they have carried this heavy burden each day of the past five years. They have carried it, lived with it, and managed to move on from it, without ever letting go. 
 
 Janelle smiles, reaching down with both hands to hold her full belly, where inside another son slumbers. 
 
 "Soon I'll be telling people that we have 13 children," she says. 
 
 Life does go on, but only beneath the shadows of the past. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Online: 
 
 http://bit.ly/1W1fWO0 
 
 ___ 
 
 Information from: Pennlive.com, http://www.pennlive.com ||||| Life continues for a Perry County family after the loss of seven of their children. 
 
 It has been one year ago since since a fire killed seven of the Clouse family's eight children. 
 
 News 8's Matt Barcaro visited the family in Perry County, to find out what got them through the year. 
 
 The family has had many highs and lows since the fire, but they said two constants have helped them continue on: family and the farm. 
 
 "In some ways, it went really fast. In some ways, it went really slow," said the children's mother, Janelle Clouse. "But, on a farm it's busy. So, it always helps preoccupy your mind, I guess." 
 
 The Clouse's dairy farm near Loysville has grown in the past year. It has more cows than ever, and calves are expected to join the herd. 
 
 As smoothly as the farm is running and as normal as their lives look, the family said that is just not the case. 
 
 "It almost seems like yesterday," Ted Clouse said. "I can still see coming from the hill here, and seeing the house on fire." 
 
 When the Clouses' farmhouse caught fire, they could do nothing but watch it. 
 
 Ted Clouse was out hauling milk at a nearby farm that night, and Janelle was working in the barn. Their eight children were just settling in to sleep, and only one made it out. 
 
 "It still gives butterflies in the stomach, still makes me half-sorta sick," Ted Clouse said. 
 
 The image of the burning house and the feeling of helplessness have not faded from their memories. 
 
 "Of that part of the night, it's not nice," Janelle Clouse said. "It's something you're going to have to live with as long as you have memory." 
 
 She said she tries not to remember the days after the fire -- the cold and rainy days she said matched her mood. She also tries not to think about the day of the funeral, when they buried seven small, white caskets. 
 
 "Even now, it sometimes still shocks me, and I'm like, 'Are my children all really gone except two?'" she said of her surviving child and new baby. "It hits you at different times." 
 
 "It's hard to believe it happened," Ted Clouse said. "I guess it's all according to plan. That's the way the good Lord wanted it, so that's the way it will be." 
 
 The same week the farmhouse burned, neighbors tore it down. The family wanted to erase the physical reminder of those seven losses. 
 
 Volunteers built a new home for the Clouses across the road. In the past year, Leah, the only child who survived the fire, turned 4 years old. 
 
 Also turning four was the number of Clouse family members. Janelle Clouse gave birth to Gabriel in June. 
 
 "He's always happy and greets you with a smile, and it makes your day better when you see him," Janelle Clouse said. "But, the family still feels incomplete." 
 
 "People that don't know you, like in the store and stuff, say, 'Oh that's so cute, you have a boy and a girl,'" Janelle Clouse said. "And it's just kind of like, 'No, it's not, because it should've been eight girls and two boys.' But, of course, they don't know. But, it's always there. It'll never be the same." 
 
 Grass has grown where the farmhouse once stood, but it's a scar that will not heal because when the Clouses look out the upstairs window in their new house, they said they still see the children's bedroom facing them. 
 
 "It's kind of haunting, actually," Janelle Clouse said. "So, I don't do that too much." 
 
 Ted and Janelle Clouse said they think of the children they lost every day. Some days, the memory is of just one. Some days, it's all seven of them. They said the memories are always with them, and sometimes it's beyond their control. 
 
 "I do have dreams of the children, dreams of stuff, of life that would've happened if they were here, and then you wake up and reality hits again," Janelle Clouse said. 
 
 The Clouses said focusing on reality is painful, but it has gotten them through the year. 
 
 Ted Clouse parked his milk truck the night he drove back to see the burning house. He has not run a route since, spending all his time now at the farm, where he's closer to home. 
 
 "I guess it's like everything else. You got to keep going ahead," Ted Clouse said. "You can't live in the past. Don't forget the past, but we can't live in it." 
 
 As for the future, a quiet house may get a little less quiet, as Janelle is expecting again. 
 
 "Yes, Ted's good at making girls," Janelle Clouse said. 
 
 The newest Clouse is due in June. She will enter a house with a reaffirmed sense of family. 
 
 "You never know how long you're going to have with a loved one, and you better make the best of it, because there's no promise that tomorrow they're going to be there to hug and kiss and love on," Janelle Clouse said. "So that's probably one of the greatest lessons I've learned." 
 
 The Clouse family said that is the realization that has made healing from an agonizingly difficult year bearable. 
 
 The Clouses said they were thankful for the many people who donated money and clothes and sent well wishes. They received thousands of cards and letters. Some even came from Hawaii and Australia. They said they held onto all of them, and they hope one day to be able to read them again. ||||| It’s been a long, lonely year of marking milestones without the children. 
 
 
 
 The first day of school. Thanksgiving. Christmas. And all seven birthdays, the last two coming in February. 
 
 
 
 Each occasion opens a new cavity of emptiness for the Clouse family. And now comes March and the final, most painful anniversary. 
 
 
 
 
 
 He joked with her about something. They traded one-liners, and a father left his daughter laughing in her bed.“She said something, and I said something back,” Ted recounts. “It was cute.”These are the precious moments to which a parent has no choice but to cling. They are scenes, glimpses and interactions so poignant now, not because they were especially unusual, unique or profound.But simply because they would be the last. At once sweet and sorrowful, yet always to remain maddeningly just out of reach.All because no one could possibly imagine what was coming.“It was the last day we had them,” Janelle explains of that day’s moment-by-moment significance. “You didn’t think about it then. But you do now.” 
 
 TWO HELPLESS PARENTS WATCH 
 
 
 
 Alone in the barn, there is only the stirrings of the cows, the whistling of the wind and the rhythmic hum of the milking machines. 
 
 
 
 Often on a farm, the work is so routine, it becomes meditation. 
 
 
 
 Janelle Clouse had been milking and tending cows since she was a little girl, raised on a dairy farm right down the road. 
 
 
 
 It was her love of that work that spurred Ted, with no history in the business other than transporting raw milk, to buy a dairy farm of their own. 
 
 
 
 With eight children and an uncertain milk market, it was a struggling enterprise, but a joyous one. 
 
 
 
 Ted kept his late-night milk route because the family needed the extra income. Often, Janelle was left to juggle the kids and the cows. 
 
 
 
 But on a farm, everyone must pull their weight, children included. The family’s older children accepted both the duties of the dairy farm and the responsibilities of caring for their younger siblings. It’s the way farm families have lived for generations. 
 
 
 
 There was never any question that the kids would go to bed in the upstairs rooms of the century-old, stick-built farmhouse. Whether they’d go right to sleep was another matter. 
 
 
 
 Janelle would check on them just as soon as she finished tending the cows. Only, she’d never get the chance. 
 
 
 
 The thin, frightened voice of her three-year-old, Leah, the only child to make it out, shattered the night. So did the eerie incongruence of light breaking the darkness and the scent of smoke, picking up on the wind. 
 
 
 
 In a moment’s terrifying realization, Janelle stumbled out of the barn. Smoke was pouring from the farmhouse. Some first-floor windows glowed with dancing orange light. 
 
 
 
 The house was on fire and the kids were upstairs — save for Miranda. The one-year-old’s crib was in the living room. 
 
 
 
 Janelle bolted for the front door and burst inside. 
 
 
 
 But the thick, black smoke was like a punch to the gut. It stole her breath and knocked her back. Heat scalded her face. The physics of fire literally repelled her from the house. 
 
 
 
 A mother could not get to her children. Worse, she didn’t even have a cell phone. 
 
 
 
 Janelle ran to a neighbor’s to have them call 911. She sprinted back and stood on the corner of the crossroads in wait of help. She stood there as if the fire trucks wouldn’t see the flames. 
 
 
 
 Janelle waited all of a minute; it seemed like an hour. She couldn’t abide one more second’s inaction. 
 
 
 
 She ran to the van and lit off for a dairy farm over the next hill. It was Ted’s first stop on his milk route. Janelle knew her husband would be there, pumping a farmer’s raw milk to take to the dairy. 
 
 
 
 Somehow, a disheveled, shell-shocked Janelle managed to spit out the words: “The house is on fire.” 
 
 
 
 Ted didn’t understand. 
 
 
 
 “It took a while for it to sink in,” he says now. “She was screaming.” 
 
 
 
 Then, Ted grabbed the wheel of the van and raced home. 
 
 
 
 Janelle, now in the passenger seat, was sure they’d crash. It was then she tried to tell her husband that it was too late. 
 
 
 
 But Ted kept the gas pedal to the floor until the van flew up a rise in the road. The house came into view. 
 
 
 
 “It was fully engulfed,” Ted manages, then falls silent, shaking, then bowing, his head. 
 
 
 
 He knew then the seven were gone: Christina, 11; Isabelle, 9; Brady, 7; Hannah, 6; Heidi, 4; Miranda, 1; and Samantha, 9 months. 
 
 
 
 First responders and spectators were converging now. And two helpless parents could do nothing but watch. 
 
 
 
 In such surreal moments, some grasp for anything to be done. Ted, after realizing the truth, turned back to the van. He drove back to the dairy farm and finished what he’d started — pumping out the milk. 
 
 
 
 Later, he worked on rigging water for his barn. The line ran to the house first, and the house was no longer there. But cows still needed to drink, so he sought control by solving problems. 
 
 
 
 “I’m one of those, if you stay busy,” Ted explains. “To some people, it might seem kind of cold-hearted. But what else could you do?” 
 
 
 
 Janelle just waited. For hours, still and numb as a statue in the cold. Her parents, a sister and a pastor had come, but she wasn’t going anywhere. 
 
 
 
 It was after 4 a.m. when firefighters began bringing the children out. Their mother waited for all seven, hot tears stinging her cold-bitten cheeks. 
 
 
 
 The pre-dawn sky was pitch-black — a dark, infinite vacuum of nothingness. 
 
 SOLACE IN FAITH AND FARMING 
 
 A year later, and Ted and Janelle take the good memories of that day with the bad. 
 
 
 
 Ted, 43, is sunny, with a bouncy, optimistic pattern to his speech. Except when a sudden thought or irrepressible image cuts off his words. 
 
 
 
 Janelle, 29, has wide eyes that seem in search of things forever lost. She smiles, but it’s wistful. 
 
 
 
 For days following the fire, she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed, remaining holed up in a temporary trailer. She wanted to pick up and leave the farm for good. 
 
 
 
 Ted, who went right back to work, prodded her daily. There was Leah to think about. And her baby, who’d be born that June and named Gabriel. 
 
 
 
 In the end, it was the cows that helped bring Janelle back. She always loved her cows. 
 
 
 
 To understand how these two have coped with every parent’s worst nightmare, times seven, one must understand faith and farming. 
 
 
 
 These things, more than anything else, have kept them going. 
 
 
 
 A farm, especially a dairy farm, is a living thing. It requires daily nurturing and twice-daily milking. It keeps one going, especially a couple running it all on their own. 
 
 
 
 Then, there’s faith — that unshakable belief that those sweet seven souls were not only in a better place, but the perfect place. 
 
 
 
 It is an absolute conviction in God’s plan, no matter how mysterious. And it is total acceptance of his blessings. Even in something so tragic, there were plenty of these: 
 
 
 
 The out-pouring from the community. The family’s new home and the many improvements to the farm funded by an overwhelming deluge of donations. 
 
 
 
 More than anything, it is Leah, who’s four now and enrolled in gymnastics and attending preschool with her cousins. 
 
 
 
 It is Gabriel, a smiling, sunny blond who can’t help but make his proud parents grin, too. He’s innocent and oblivious to everything that came before. Yet, he harbors shadows of the lost children in his gestures and facial expressions. 
 
 
 
 At first, the baby’s blessed arrival made Janelle feel guilty, as if she were somehow cheating on little Samantha, the nine-month-old, also born in June. 
 
 
 
 
 
 “I doesn’t really make too much sense, but I almost felt bad at the time,” Janelle says.Then something clicked, and the mother welcomed those hints of her other children in her new son, as if the lost ones were winking at her from afar. And she will welcome such traits in the new baby, due this June.A little girl.It will be the couple’s tenth child. Janelle marvels that the last four will have all been born in June, each a year apart.The couple has no plans for more, just as they have no plans to stop, either.They will take what comes, what God gives them.They have learned this above all. It’s how they’ve survived.“It wasn’t our decision for them to leave,” Janelle says of her deceased children. “I’m not sure it should be our decision when to stop.” 
 
 THE GUILT LINGERS 
 
 The two-story brick home at the corner of Madison Road and Route 274 stands like a fortress. It seems so sturdy and indestructible, as if it was purposefully built in answer to the wooden farmhouse that went up like a tinder box. 
 
 
 
 The place is full of furniture now. It looks lived-in and homey. 
 
 
 
 Janelle pads around the kitchen and adjoining family room in her bare feet, often with Gabriel perched at her hip. The faces of her seven angels are framed and displayed prominently on a wooden shelf near the flat screen TV. 
 
 
 
 Leah used to look at the smiling images, point and call out there names. But if the year since the fire has sometimes seemed like a lifetime to her parents, it really has been one for little Leah. 
 
 
 
 Precisely speaking, it’s been a quarter of her young life. 
 
 
 
 With the passage of time, a little girl’s memory has faded. She doesn’t talk much about her siblings anymore. There’s no telling what, or even if, she’ll remember. 
 
 
 
 Janelle was about Leah’s age when she lost an older brother in a farming accident. The tragedy that devastated her father is all but lost on her. And so is that long-gone brother who she doesn’t remember at all. 
 
 
 
 It saddens her to think this could be the case with Leah and her lost siblings. 
 
 
 
 What Leah hasn’t forgotten — what she likely will never forget — is the fire she so narrowly escaped. She doesn’t talk about it much either, but almost anything can bring the events rushing back. 
 
 
 
 One evening, Ted was frying liver in a skillet. Something distracted him, and the unattended pan began throwing up smoke. 
 
 
 
 Alarms positioned all over the house began squealing their shrill screams. Instantly, Leah was terrified. 
 
 
 
 Distraught and crying, she wanted to leave, to go to her grandparents. Anything to get out of the house and away from danger. 
 
 
 
 Ted quickly waved away the smoke and quieted the alarms. But their daughter remained on edge the entire night. And the lingering odor of burnt liver hung in the air like a bad omen. 
 
 
 
 A few weeks ago, the Clouses ran out of propane on a cold night. Ted wheeled in a portable heater that glowed orange and threw heat to the kitchen and the family room. 
 
 
 
 Leah eyed it warily. 
 
 
 
 She wouldn’t go near it, and she didn’t want it in the house. She’d rather be cold. 
 
 
 
 The little girl gives a similar wide berth to the trash burn barrels in the yard. 
 
 
 
 She loves getting rides on farm equipment from her daddy. But not when the fires are lit and the barrels are spitting flames. She’ll scream and turn away if Ted veers too close. 
 
 
 
 For the most part, though, the Clouse household is a monument to safety. 
 
 
 
 It is covered in smoke detectors and outfitted with sprinklers in every room. There are multiple exits, and two sets of stairs leading from the second floor. 
 
 
 
 In time, these features should comfort Leah, just as they do her mother. 
 
 
 
 At least Janelle never dreams of the fire. 
 
 
 
 This is a mercy. In her best, most vivid dreams, the children are alive and real as flesh. She can be with them, if only fleetingly. 
 
 
 
 “I know it’s just a dream, but in my dream, everything is back to normal,” Janelle says. 
 
 
 
 Then, she wakes. 
 
 
 
 The mind plays tricks, too. 
 
 
 
 One’s internal voice can be the harshest prosecutor. And Janelle has been called to account by her own cruel conscience, time and again. 
 
 
 
 The line of interrogation is always the same: Was the smoke really that intense? Could she have saved the children? 
 
 
 
 Her own guilt twists the facts. As the questions spin out of control, shouting ever louder in her head, doubts creep in. She second-guesses herself. 
 
 
 
 It’s a trapdoor that, once opened, leads nowhere but down into a dank basement of despair. This is why Janelle hurries to slam it closed and bolt it shut. 
 
 
 
 Janelle convinces herself of what’s correct: The smoke was too thick. She wouldn’t have made it to the stairs. She would have died, too. 
 
 
 
 “I know it was too bad for me to go in or I would have gone in,” she insists. 
 
 
 
 All this is true. What’s surprising is how little comfort it provides. 
 
 
 
 The cause of the fire remains undetermined. Yet another loose end. More questions that nag. 
 
 
 
 Yet, sometimes it’s better not to know all the answers. 
 
 
 
 For Janelle, more details would only mean more images inside her head. 
 
 
 
 “I don’t know if I’d want to be able to picture it exactly,” she says. 
 
 'IT DIDN'T DESTROY US' 
 
 The fire was a family tragedy. It quickly become a community cause, bringing out the best in rough, rural Perry County. 
 
 
 
 This is a proud place where people enjoy and respect their privacy. There is elbow room here. Traffic lights are few and far between. 
 
 
 
 But some might misread Perry Countians’ search for solace and thirst for independence as a desire for reclusiveness. 
 
 
 
 Not so. 
 
 
 
 Bonds run deep here. Yes, people like being left alone. But when tragedy visits, no one here is on their own. 
 
 
 
 “If you don’t need us, we don’t bother you,” explains Tammy Milligan of nearby Andersonburg. 
 
 
 
 “But if you need us, we’re going to be there,” she adds. “The bigger the emergency, the bigger the response.” 
 
 
 
 In wake of the unprecedented heartache of a family losing seven children, Perry County rose to the occasion. 
 
 
 
 There were so many fund-raisers being held for the family, sponsors had to wait in line for available space at fire halls, picnic grounds and public spaces. 
 
 
 
 There were bake sales, chicken barbecues and in-kind and cash donations. Amish, Mennonite and “English,” alike, banded together and built the Clouses’ new home. 
 
 
 
 People who had never milked a cow in their life stepped forward to give a hand on the dairy farm. 
 
 
 
 Exactly how much was raised remains confidential. But along Route 274 in Loysville, one small fund-raiser held by one little general store, T&T Bargain Boys, generated more than $12,000 in donations. And there were scores more, just like this one. 
 
 
 
 “They were everywhere,” store manager Mary M. Morrison says. 
 
 
 
 The help, cards, toys and checks poured in from far beyond Perry County’s borders. At its height, the Clouses’ church was receiving 500 checks a day. Cards came in stacks. 
 
 
 
 The generosity is evident throughout the Clouse home and in the many improvements to the now 80-cow family farm — myriad things that make life a little easier. 
 
 
 
 The farm is on its feet after years of struggle. Ted no longer spends long nights away from the family on milk runs. He never drove his route again following the fire. 
 
 
 
 Unopened toys are stacked in closets. Little Leah got so many, she became somewhat spoiled. 
 
 
 
 All her life, the little girl had been one of eight. Adult attention was divided and spread among all her siblings. Then suddenly, unalterably, all the attention was being showered upon her alone. 
 
 
 
 Leah had all those toys but no playmates. She’d lost all her brothers and sisters. 
 
 
 
 Then came little Gabriel. Now, there’s a sister on the way. After being one of the little ones of the family, Leah is forever the big sister. 
 
 
 
 It’s a role-reversal, one of many. 
 
 
 
 Ted, the dairy farm novice, has settled into his full-time role on the family farm. Janelle assists when she can, but no longer has the household help from her older daughters. 
 
 
 
 So much has changed. Yet, the Clouses never allowed the coldness and distance that sometimes creeps into even the best of relationships following tragedy. 
 
 
 
 “It devastates you like you wouldn’t believe, but it didn’t mentally take us,” Janelle explains. “I’m glad it didn’t destroy us.” 
 
 
 
 Ted and Janelle joke with each other. Prod one another when necessary. She calls him Teddy, the man she first met as a 12-year-old on her family’s dairy farm. 
 
 
 
 He was the truck driver who came to pump their milk and take it to the dairy. At 16, she started riding along in the truck. By 19, she was his wife. 
 
 
 
 Janelle might be petite, all of five feet tall. She’s shy and soft-spoken. But make no mistake, she called the shots when it came to starting the farm. 
 
 
 
 She’s the one who knows the ins and outs of the family enterprise. And it was Janelle who taught her husband. 
 
 
 
 They remain a team, a unit, a company — and a family. 
 
 
 
 This above all. 
 
 
 
 It’s a family forever changed — and changing still. 
 
 
 
 Come June, they’ll welcome a daughter. Janelle wonders whether the birth will fall on one of the other children’s June birthdays. 
 
 
 
 Wouldn’t that be something, she muses. Another sign, perhaps. A reminder that while too much has been taken, much remains. Blessings, all. 
 
 
 
 The farm. Their family. Each other. Life. And of course, their memories. 
 
 
 
 Those treasurers of time in a bottle, to be forever preserved. 
 
 
 
 “I like to think of things before the fire,” Janelle says. “That’s all you have anymore — memories.” 
 
 
 
 
 

– The loss was so enormous, the tragedy so unthinkable, it made national news five years ago in March 2011. A family of 10—eight children and their parents—were reduced to three in one cruel night in rural Pennsylvania when a fire of still unknown origins swept through their 100-year-old farmhouse and claimed seven of the children's lives, reported PennLive in 2012. There were so many fundraisers that sponsors had to wait in line for space at local picnic grounds and fire halls, reports PennLive now. But as mother Janelle Clouse put it, the fire that nearly destroyed them didn't, and life went on, literally, with the birth of her son Gabriel just four months later. Then came Yvonne, who is now 3, then Gordon, who is 2, and Jedidiah, who is 10 months. Now Janelle is expecting a boy in April, which will bring the number of living children, including Leah, the only to survive the fire, to six, reports the AP. The family, always busy with chores on their dairy farm, was going about the usual routine that fateful March night when Leah, who was 3 at the time, found her mother tending to the cows in the barn and, visibly frightened, said, "Miranda is playing with smoke." The thinness of her voice, the light breaking through the darkness, and the scent of smoke on the wind had Janelle racing for the house. Six of the children were found upstairs, some huddled under beds, while baby Samantha was in her crib in the living room, just out of reach of Janelle, who will never forget watching, helpless, the fire take almost everything with it. (The children all died of smoke inhalation.) Today the Clouses say they're thankful for the many in their community and beyond—from as far as Hawaii and Australia—who sent cards, letters, and money, reports WGAL. They've kept every last one in their sturdy new brick house built across the street.