Family Ties Strong After Shattering Loss

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice this time, not a child’s or a teenage girl’s.

So this must be “Aunt Cindy.” And now I realize I never learned Aunt Cindy’s and Uncle Marty’s last name.

“Um,” I say, “is this the Rucker residence?”

A short laugh: “Sort of.”

It is, more accurately, the Thompson-Rucker-McPherson residence, surely one of the busiest households in Cincinnati. They are getting used to confusion.

I’d called in hopes of getting a better understanding of what had become of the five children of the late Sharon McPherson.

You may recall the story. McPherson, a 43-year-old singer, moves from Pittsburgh to Burbank in hopes of launching show-biz careers for her five theatrically inclined children. One night in May, she and three of her kids are driving on Glenoaks Boulevard when the car runs out of gas. She knocks on a stranger’s door and he agrees to help her fetch gasoline.

McPherson and the good Samaritan, Agustin Luz, are putting gasoline in her car when they are struck by a hit-and-run driver as McPherson’s children look on. Luz is critically injured. McPherson dies that night at a hospital. A suspect is later arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter.

More so than most sad incidents, this one moved strangers to compassion. That has been evident in the way so many people in Burbank have rallied to help the Luz family and the McPherson children.

The Village Church, the Burbank Kiwanis and a Burbank police group all collected donations to help the Luz family and Sharon McPherson’s children. Checking the Luz family’s progress was easy enough. But McPherson’s orphaned children had been flown back to Ohio to live with their eldest sibling, 25-year-old Carrie Ann Brown, who is married and has two small children of her own.

The Burbank groups sent clothing, gift certificates and cash that helped Carrie buy a minivan. But it was understood that this domestic arrangement, a traditional nuclear family of four suddenly transformed into an untraditional family of nine, might not work out.

It didn’t.

“This was something Carrie wanted to try, and we felt she deserved a chance, being their sister,” Marty Thompson explained. But because Carrie is their sibling, he added: “They didn’t show her quite the respect they would have and she didn’t discipline very well.”

From the start, Marty Thompson, 33, and his wife, Cindy, 30, had offered to open their Cincinnati home to their nieces and nephews.

Thompson is the half-brother of the late Gregory Rucker, Sharon McPherson’s first husband and the father of Carrie, 17-year-old Suzi and 13-year-old Joni. Twelve-year-old Joshua, 9-year-old Jessica and 5-year-old Jonathan were fathered by McPherson’s second husband; they use their mother’s surname. Sharon McPherson and her second husband split some years before she decided to move the family to Burbank.

The new domestic arrangement, according to both Marty Thompson and his niece, Suzi Rucker, is working out better than one might expect. It is difficult, complicated, bewildering--and nothing less than joyful.

The younger children may not be blood relations, but there’s no less familial love, Marty says, when little Jonathan asks him to read a bedtime story.

Marty and Cindy Thompson had long wondered whether they would ever feel their hearts tugged so happily. They had tried to have children since they married seven years ago. Medical examinations led Cindy to take fertility treatments--with no success.

Now, as if they are living out the premise of some family TV series, they find themselves suddenly raising a kindergartner, a high school senior and three more in between.

“We’re teaching one to drive and one to tie his shoes,” he says. “And the rest are about to hit puberty, I think. So wish me luck.”

Luck isn’t all they need. Marty is a salesman for an industrial paint firm, Cindy works in accounts receivable for another company. Their new budget now strains their paychecks. The minivan that Carrie bought is now in Marty’s name but other expenses are mounting. The basement was recently waterproofed--that job alone cost $4,000--to accommodate the construction of two more bedrooms and a much-needed second bathroom. A single bathroom for seven people, Marty says, makes it tough in the mornings.

Friends have helped the Thompsons and fund-raisers are being planned in Cincinnati. Marty says he wants everyone in Burbank to know how grateful they are for the continuing support.

And Suzi Rucker wants all her friends at Burbank High--the cast of “Bye Bye Birdie” and all the others--to know how much she misses them and how much she appreciated the video they made for her.

“They’re just so awesome!” she said of the friends she left behind.

And as for Uncle Marty and Aunt Cindy?

“They’re so totally cool!”

Donations may be made to the Luz-McPherson Relief Fund, c/o Stephen Veres, 3001 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank 91505.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.