Local youth sell lemonade to benefit fire victims

The Pooler family lost their home and ended up in the hospital after their house on Jason Drive caught on fire over the weekend.

After learning about what had happened, two girls, Bailey Morse and Kynleah Bancroft, decided they wanted to help.

"We heard that their house burned down and they got hurt real bad," Morse said.

The couple were taken to the hospital, then released Monday morning, suffering first degree burns.

"We were going to see if there was anything we could give to them and we couldn't find anything and mom said we should do a lemonade stand," Bancroft said.

So they decided to do just that, setting up their stand Tuesday afternoon.

They said it was starting out good, as neighbors came up to get a cold glass of lemonade, with each one including a wedge of lemon.

"We get to donate money to the family and that we get to make lemonade," Bancroft said of what she was enjoying about having the lemonade stand.

To see the destruction the fire caused, the girls took a trip by the house.

"We drove by and you could see straight through their house," Bancroft said.

Although they didn't have a set goal, they wanted to raise as much money for the family as they could.

Then on Wednesday, 7-year-old Emma Coslett also set up a lemonade stand to do her part to help the family.

She had heard about what happened to the Pooler family, who lived down the street from her.

"I decided to do this for the people that got their house caught on fire," she said. "It made me really sad."

She had ridden her bike down the street and saw the destroyed house.

She had told her mother how sad it was they had lost their house. Then later that evening after saying her prayers, she came out and told her mother she wanted to do a lemonade stand. At first, her mother thought she was already on to a new topic, but then Emma explained she wanted to do the lemonade stand to raise money for the Pooler family.

"I want to raise enough money to help the people who got their house caught on fire," Emma said.

She wanted to raise enough to help them get a new house.

To help promote her lemonade stand, which also offered cookies made by a neighbor, brownies that Emma made and watermelon, she took flyers around to her neighbors for three hours the afternoon before.

The Poolers' home was a total loss, valued at about $300,000 plus the contents of their house.