The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘So grateful’ for support from the community
Grieving his mother’s passing the previous day, Sam Phommachanh left his Stratford home early in the evening of Dec. 21 to pick up his son at LaGuardia Airport.
“Obviously, Taisun wanted to be home to be with family,” Sam said. “My mother meant so much to us.”
Taisun Phommachanh, a redshirt freshman backup quarterback at Clemson, had a College Football Playoff national semifinal against Ohio State coming up on New Year’s night. Football, no matter how big the game, would take a backseat.
“His flight landed around 9:50, 10 o’clock,” Sam said.
Kane Phommachanh was born in Thailand and had been a longtime resident of Bridgeport. She worked at Schick Manufacturing for three decades, and after Kane and her husband, Kham, retired, they moved to Georgia.
“We’d go down there for Christmas every year,” Sam said. “We spent a lot of time with them over the years. My father passed (in 2019) and my mother’s health got worse over the past year.”
Kane died at Bridgeport Hospital on Dec. 20. She was 68. Services were scheduled and held Christmas Eve morning at Cyril F. Mullins Funeral Home in Trumbull. All of this was on Sam’s mind as he and Taisun returned from LaGuardia to Cheshire St. around 11:30 p.m.
“Just as we pulled up, we see my daughter running out with
the dog,” Sam said.
Sam thought Kaylah was coming out to greet Taisun. No, that wasn’t it at all.
“She’s crying,” Sam said. “And going, ‘The house is on fire!’ ”
“I’m looking at the house and saying, ‘What are you talking about?’ I edged up a little to side of the house. Now I see the fire coming out.”
Sam immediately started asking where everyone was. His wife, Jasmine, and kids were there. His sister was at the house. So were his two nephews. His wife’s sister, too. Family had arrived to grieve and attend Kane’s services. There’d be a dozen people staying that night at the large colonial just south of the Merritt Parkway.
“My sister was asleep,” Sam said, “so they ran upstairs to get her, and I hear my daughter yelling, ‘Tyler!’ He had run upstairs to try to stop the fire. We had a little fire extinguisher. I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ My wife ran after him to get him. We had to let it burn. The main thing was to get everyone out of the house safely.”
They did. “Instead of one funeral, we easily could have been planning for four,” Sam said. “My sister was asleep. Aiden, who we’ve taken in and adopted him, was asleep. And then Tyler runs back in the house. When they came out, with all the smoke, their whole faces, everything was black. They were in the fire.”
Tyler, who started at Bunnell High and finished at Avon Old Farms, has chosen to play for Randy Edsall at UConn over the likes of Army, Navy and Coastal Carolina. Although he had committed months before, the official signing day was only five days before the fire. He’s a quarterback in a house of quarterbacks. Sam had been a standout at Harding High from 1988-90.
Taisun, who played at Avon Old Farms after Harding, was ranked the No. 1 recruit in the state by ESPN in 2019. He has waited his chance behind Trevor Lawrence, yet with the emergence of D.J. Uiagalelei, Taisun’s journey is one yet to fully unfold. Older brother Jordan played football at Curry, while Kaylah runs track at Bunnell. Part Laotian. Part Haitian. The kids are all athletes.
It was a spark from a plug for a speaker that appeared to have started the fire on the rug or the bed in Tyler’s room. That’s what Sam was told.
“The crazy thing was Tyler was going to go to sleep, but he had a stomachache and he came back downstairs,” Sam said. “My wife and my sister-inlaw were talking to him and made him some tea or something to help settle his stomach. All of a sudden, my sister-in-law smelled smoke.”
Tyler’s room, Kaylah’s room, the bathroom, the room where Kane had stayed, all were engulfed in flames and the fire extended into the attic. Smoke filled that large colonial where Sam and Jasmine raised the kids. In all, 22 firefighters would put out the fire within a half hour. Assistant Fire Chief Robert Daniel declared the structure uninhabitable.
“We left, literally, with the shirts on our back,” Sam said. “The only ones with shoes on were me and Taisun.”
Sam had been driving trucks and doing a little real estate. Recently, he has done a few things here and there for friends who have their own trucking business. Jasmine has a catering business, Angel Face Catering, that specializes in Caribbean cuisine.
Phommachanh. It’s difficult to spell and not hard to pronounce. It’s Pumachon. Although they have become one of the most prominent athletic families in the state, what happened Christmas week, only five weeks ago, could bring even the strongest families to their knees.
Sam didn’t go to New Orleans for the Ohio StateClemson game. None of his family did. They did give their tickets to families that needed them. They were given a stipend to travel but didn’t use it. Taisun returned to his team. The family watched the game on TV.
“He was like, ‘I feel crazy leaving you,’ ” Sam said. “I said, ‘Listen, you have something to do. Go do it.’ ”
As they’ve looked for a four-bedroom home, the family has remained in a hotel. There was insurance on the home. But so much was destroyed, and life’s financial demands never stop. In the face of this, the Phommachanhs found out plenty about the goodwill and love of neighbors, friends and people they don’t even know personally.
“I started getting calls only a few days after the fire and they’re saying, ‘Sam, is that your GoFundMe page?’ ” Phommachanh said. “They’ve got your picture up there and everything.’ I’m prideful. I feel like I worked for mine. I didn’t know anything about it. A couple of friends wanted to donate, and I’m like, ‘Don’t do it. I think that’s a scam.’
“I told my wife about it and she said, ‘I forgot to tell you. John and them started one.’ ”
It wasn’t a scam. It was their neighbor John Minopoli.
The neighbors put them up right away, got them dinners, helped get them into a hotel. And that GoFundMe page? Minopoli was right when he wrote on it that the generosity was “a true miracle during this holiday season.”
More than $90,000 was raised. Money came from everywhere. If the messages on the donations can be used as a guide, many Clemson supporters showed their generosity.
“We are so grateful for people reaching out to us,” Sam said. “So many people called. From Avon Old Farms, UConn, Mike Levis, (whose son Will Levis plays quarterback at Penn State), everyone. And everything that has been donated, what John started, we so appreciate it and are so thankful.
“We all could use more money, but that’s more than enough to give us a nice start.”
The night his house burned down, still grieving the loss of his mom, Sam said they were out there on Cheshire Street in Stratford until 5 a.m. At one point, firemen walked with them as they were allowed in for a bit to retrieve a few things.
Nothing really was salvageable.
“All my wife wanted was her Bible,” Sam said. “The chief said in all his years at the department nobody ever had asked for the Bible and nothing else.”
Jasmine found her Bible.